INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

For many businesses in the current economic climate key drivers of business activity are cash conservation and margin protection. In this circumstance it is simply prudent to drive value in the business by having “one view of the truth”, pulling business information from disparate sources into a single integrated management system. However, many corporate business management systems are in the form of ERP or the better MIS systems, which require you to stop using your incumbent systems and migrate to a completely new system. These legacy systems often work pretty well, but just cannot provide either the business analytics required from the data, or a single view of the data located in various places possibly on various sites and in various formats across all the business.

Not only do these system projects have a high failure rate, but the business disruption and expense caused by migration to the new system frequently compromises operational effectiveness and achievement of business goals – the very problems you wanted the new system to fix! A clear understanding of the goals, how their delivery will be quantified and the cost justification is a prerequisite when planning this kind of system.

The technology underpinning business management systems can be deployed in a number of ways. This could be either as an on site model, sitting on a server in your office and linked across a network and via a VPN, or nowadays using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, rented for a monthly fee according to the number of users and the functionality required. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Alternatively a system could be built specifically for you and your requirements, although given the time and actual cost involved and the functionality commercially available out of the box this usually isn’t a practical option.

We can provide both an overview of your business need and a perspective on the most relevant route for you.

Browser based systems are available which provide a common view of the data in your legacy systems, summarized graphically according to login. This means you don’t have to migrate data to a new system then junk the old ones.

Analytics would highlight your key business behaviours and KPI’s, with predictive tools which illustrate when goals are being missed and that corrective actions are necessary. Modules often  include a single view of the customer experience with document storage, providing a common point of access for both team activity and customer materials. This makes your business performance information available in one place, accessed from anywhere in an easily understandable format. This could be seen as a sort of Customer Relationship Management systems on steroids.

These all encompassing systems tend to be larger in scope and purpose so there are a number of questions to consider. How scaleable is the system, how will multiple languages be accommodated and developed, is some form of multiple currency management and conversiuon required, and if so how managed? Is customer access necessary, should reporting be realtime consolidated views of data or will they be nightly updates? How much confiruring can we do ourselves?

We have implemented a number of systems with blue chip clients on just this kind of business need. Speak to us.