Improving your organization
The purpose of software in business is to support the way an organization does business – from the way it runs it’s hiring and firing to the way it orders materials to the way it tracks sales.
While many of these business processes (hiring, firing, selling, ordering, etc.) are common in name from business to business, in practice they are usually highly customized.
Until recently, building software solutions to support these unique processes was costly, risky and took a long time. With the advent of "cloud computing", these solutions become much more feasible.
Take advantage of this to improve the efficiency of your business and the effectiveness of your employees. Keep in mind that a large collection of small improvements can add up to a significant difference. Here are some ideas:
| Benefit | Type of Application |
| Improve decision making
| Increase the speed by which knowledge workers receive information; deliver the right information at the right time; provide shared, common access to the latest information at all times; automatically consolidate information from multiple sources. |
| Reduce errors
| Reduce re-keying of information by providing single data entry facilities for multiple systems; provide a central shared database to ensure everyone is working off the same data at all times; eliminate paperwork by providing online forms; prevent things from falling through the cracks through automated notification of missed deadlines; deal with problems earlier by automating red-flag reporting through monitoring. |
| Process faster
| Improve visibility of commitments so decisions aren’t delayed due to missed commitments or poor coordination; reduce miscommunication by keeping the right data, making it always available, and by making changes immediately visible; reduce lag time by automatically notifying the next person in a workflow to start a process. |
| Increase customer satisfaction
| Build highly customized solutions for each client; respond faster to customer queries by making information easy to find; offer customers self-service; automatically keep the customer informed through automated notifications; identify problem trends earlier through tracking and threshold reporting. |
| Increase innovation | Gain insight by unlocking and re-mixing information in new ways; make it easier and less costly to try new ideas; free up more time for users to use for innovation. |
| Increase agility | Dynamically assemble new applications and bring them to market quickly. |
| Improve attention allocation | Reduce the need to do constant followup by using automated notifications; reduce the need to search for information – make the information come directly to the user when they need it; reduce the amount of clutter the user needs to push through to get the exact information they need. |
| Automate compliance | Automate logging for compliance purposes. |
| Speed time to market | Bypass traditional development methodology for certain types of applications. |
| Increase employee satisfaction | Reduce stress through automation; provide software that is better suited to each users needs; provide users with the ability to create their own solutions; provide easier access to enterprise and Web data for use in their jobs; better coordinated teamwork. |
| Increase competitiveness and market share | Through greater customer satisfaction; more innovative solutions; made-to-fit services. |