All companies, no matter its origin, whether its public or private, have business strategies based on growth, resource generation and the wellbeing of its people. With a mission to provide quality products and services that meet the demanding conditions of its clients and customers alike while delivering the implied value promise. This quest for excellence has led companies to implement business management systems that support the organizational processes in an easy and efficient way.
Thus, companies articulate and integrate with each of these systems to attain their value promise in operational feasibility and efficiency represented in organizational productivity.
Likewise, the implementation and correct management of said systems present challenges for everyone at the company. The increased complexity and the scope of the organizational process with the business systems all of a sudden challenge workers to get the most value from management input and business operations.
These challenges are organized into 4 different roles of decision makers within the company:
- Managers: Those workers inside the company over whom the responsibility for purchasing and executing the tools falls.
- Users: All those members who must use the tool to visualize information, as well as manage and manipulate the data inside the system.
- Technical: The people in charge of installing, supporting and administering the tool’s functionality.
- Economical: Corresponds to the financial decision makers regarding the acquisition of the tool.
The above identified challenges for each role in the purchase and implementation process for a tool are described:
Each of these challenges represents an opportunity for improving the implementation of organizational processes through business systems. The question the purchase decision making team must answer is – These challenges existed when we bought the tool, so, how have we solved them day-to-day in the organization? Perhaps, the answer to this question lies in a representative analysis of the operational costs of their organization.
By implementing a management or operational support tool, as was mentioned earlier, the company was looking to increase its productivity and efficiency. It’s possible that, at this point, the company feels these goals have been met, and the challenges have been overlapped with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty. But, which actions have they executed to that end?
Easy access to the information
In the competitive business world, decision making becomes an advantage differentiator, but for that, the strategic and tactical levels in their organization require having the right information. Maybe their company invested in a tool with the goal that all their processes were storing information in their system. Now, accessing said information has become complex. First, you must pay for a license to access the system; second, you must identify the type of report you need to have and find the relevant data, finding its source of information and even building it. This takes training time and action execution time, which represents expenditure and delays, money which will go directly to the operational cost and will affect your productivity indicators.
Pertinence of the information
Good business management systems/tools are based on understanding the challenges of each of the agents in the business management process. And, through simple processes, allow to improve organizational productivity, reducing operational times, information procrastination and generating the required knowledge for effective and efficient decision making, in an ever-changing business environment.
Tool learning curve
A change always exists, resistance to it will arise, the learnt way of doing things, although not very efficient, it generates the trust of experience in the people within the organization. Each new business management tool represents a challenge in learning time, mistakes made, and all of this translated into costs, that results in affecting the company’s performance.
To help in the transition, IT-ROI aims for the operationalization of said tools to be made in friendly environments that are known by the users through the use of interfaces and unidirectional and bidirectional integrations with Microsoft systems such as Excel and SharePoint. Facilitating the learning process for workers, reducing tool adoption time and mistakes made, increasing productivity.
More credentials
A new tool means more licenses required for the organization, the question that arises from this is – what do you need people to do in your system? The answer can be as varied with profiles you find inside your company. There will be those who require administering the system or manipulating information inside it. You’ll also have profiles that only require visualizing the information and/or modifying simple information. Because of this, it’s important to keep in mind the types and amount of licenses you need to purchase, or rely on information and collaborative systems so your organization can save on licensing expenditures.
Operational overcharges
A successful company continually searches for that competitive edge, and thus, productivity becomes a strategic goal. The overcharges caused by the implementation of a new system directly affects productivity, so it is essential to reduce the costs of operating the system, thus profiting to the maximum benefits of the investment.
Check out this short animated video on leveraging Microsoft SharePoint and Excel as your business content management system.
Related Topic: 3 Simple Steps That Will Help Improve Your Managerial Information Process