Business IT solutions
Automation solutions for business is a quite extensive and not always unambiguous theme. Before buying or ordering software, the manager should answer following questions:
- What is the purpose of automation of the company?
- Which processes can be automated?
- What do you need to automate to achieve the desired goals?
With the answers, you will be able to choose or to order the information system that will really help your business to grow and to be a success.
In this article, we would like to tell you which processes are usually automated. We also will take a look at the most popular information systems that are used for this purpose. A little note: in this review we will proceed from the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. Automation of large enterprises is a separate issue, which can be devoted to more than a dozen articles.
As a general rule, the purpose of automation is to reduce costs, increase productivity and quality, as well as supervise the work of employees. Usually there are the following factors that influence the achievement of this goal:
- interaction with customers;
- business processes optimization;
- enterprise performance management;
- information resources management.
Interaction with customers
If the welfare of the company depends on the number of customers and sales, then you just need a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management). Despite the fact that the market offers a lot of CRM-systems, the basic principle remains the same. The company creates a single database to gather all customer information and interaction with it. Thus, it will be easy to find there a client who asserts that he or she has already worked with your company two years ago and the employee's name who was put in charge.
Business processes optimization
When more than five people work at the company, you need regulations, lists of duties and other formal procedures. Business processes management is designed to help in this situation. Business processes, which are transparent to all participants, allow to build a clear understanding of responsibilities and monitor the implementation of the tasks. Modeling and automation are performed by using BPMS (Business Process Management System). Despite the fact that such a decision seems to be a panacea for small and medium-sized businesses, we recommend to pay attention to the pros and cons of BPMS implementation.
Enterprise performance management
Evaluating the effectiveness of the company is closely linked to business process management, since it is easy to link the performance indicators to automated processes. KPI system can analyze key performance indicators and helps to build a strategy for development of the enterprise. In addition, with the KPI, you can create a staff incentive system that will protect managers from the question "Why I got less money this month?", and employees will be able to control their earnings directly. However, we should not forget that it is impossible to create a perfect system of key performance indicators, from time to time it should be revised and edited.
Information resources management
Information resources of the company are office and accounting documents (contracts, declarations, invoices, etc.). When the manager's desk starts to break from the papers, it makes sense to think about the workflow automation. In a broad sense, ECM systems are usually used for enterprise content management. However, for small and medium businesses will be better to pay attention only to the Document automation systems. Due to a single documents base, such systems allow to increase the speed of processing, search, and control of documents.
In conclusion, we would like to remind you that the choice of IT solution should start with an analysis of the current situation in the company. Only with the full information about existing problems, you will be able to decide, what IT solutions will benefit your business.
