Dynamic Business

If you have a growing business, one of the most important characteristics of your IT system is its scalability and ability to grow along with your company.

Finding a system that can adapt to the specific needs of your company is essential. What if you need to automate new areas of the business in the future? Look for a solution that offers open architecture, which allows you to easily add features and adapt to new IT paradigms. Open architecture is especially important if you expect your company to experience growth or change in the future.

Beware of ‘one size fits all’ solutions: if all functionality is included, then you are paying for everything, even the features that you do not need.

Here’s a few steps to help you plan for a new business system:

Think forward to the next step
Most software companies have various families of products geared toward specific business sizes of customers. A key question to ask is whether or not the products are built on unified system architecture and if they have a built-in upgrade path from one product to the next.

If the family of products has been developed on the same architecture, future upgrades from product to product and the subsequent data exchange can be managed much more smoothly. Ensure that as your company grows and you move up in the family of products that you will not need to retrain your users on a completely different workflow and user interface. The smart choice is a product that will fit your business requirements for at least the next seven to 10 years.

Make integration a high priority
Connecting all functions and linking to customers, suppliers, and other business partners externally can dramatically reduce lead times and waste throughout your organisation. You’ll streamline operations and gain a competitive edge by integrating your accounting, business intelligence, customer relationship management, supply chain, and human resource management applications.

When evaluating software, check to see how seamlessly it integrates or can be integrated with other systems. Tight integration will save you time, promote greater efficiencies, and add value to your business.

Integration is especially important for manufacturing and distribution companies. Inventory that sits in your warehouse is cash your business could otherwise be using. When considering solutions, study what options are available for warehouse management. The proper use of integration will pay your organisation huge dividends in the form of reduced inventory cycles, more efficient warehouse operations, less paperwork (including the reduction duplicate data entry), and better order accuracy.

Embrace industry standard technology
The evolution of technology is as certain as death and taxes! Hardware, databases, operating systems (OS), servers, and all IT infrastructures are ever-evolving. You can’t afford to be running your business on unsupported software. Ask the software vendor which databases it supports, along with which operating systems and server systems. Look for vendors that stay up to date with technology and frequently advance their technology.

On-demand or cloud-based deployment
With advances in web technologies and growth in broadband access to the internet, alternative deployment methods have emerged. Most evaluations of software will include the question of whether to implement the solution ‘on-premise’ or in the cloud.

The relative advantage or disadvantage of one deployment type over others is dependent on your objectives and circumstances. The more important question is that of versatility and options. If you select a cloud-based solution, do you have the option to move your data to on-premise in the future? And what is the cost? You don’t want to invest in a solution and not have the agility to adapt to the future.