Many organisations are going through periods of re-engineering and many types of reconstruction with the ultimate goal of reducing the number of staff during this economic crisis and improving the quality of work to ensure high standards with continuous improvement and adopting the principles of TQM (Total Quality Management). The organisations who get this right will be the ones who will take the market lead following the recession.
The driving forces behind implementing such a system is service improvement, speed to market, optimised/standardised business processes & technology, operation risk reduction as well as cost reduction.
While I was on my work experience I had the pleasure of working for a large organisation that were introducing a large system into the workplace with the hope of building a platform and support processes for growth – both organic & inorganic growth, through enhancing operational effectiveness and improving operational cost efficiency to enable economies of scale.
The implementation of such a large system into an organisation is not as straight forward as one would imagine, yes we can purchase products off the shelf from big Vendors such as Sap, Oracle and Lawson but nine times out of ten theses products need to be customised to meet the organisations needs and wants.
Therefore my experience leads me to believe that an organisation should ask themselves the following questions when choosing a suitable product & vendor; can the system ensure that the organization can respond to market and business demands effectively? Will this product position the organisation strongly to drive and sustain future growth and to positively differentiate itself in the markets? What will the new system achieve that the existing system couldn’t? Can tasks be carried out more efficiently? Will the introduction of this new system save time and money? Will we gain a competitive advantage over our competitors’?
Who is the best possible vendor for us? Which vendor will provide you with the value for your money? Is this system built to suit our needs? What can one vendor offer us that another vendor can’t? Will they provide us with the necessary help to get the system up and running within the organisation? Will they provide us with after sales service if a problem occurs or a query rises?
