DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Posts Tagged ‘Recession Proofing Technology’

So the news is not good. Apart from the obvious feelings of a new beginning (President Obama’s inaugoration) that is being projected by our US friends, the rest of the world seems a little less hopeful at least for the short term. Australia gained around 10,000 new people on the unemployment figures yesterday as BHP and Rio Tinto announced their various reforms and a global technology giant announced global redundancies in their thousands. To state the bledding obvious, everyones chief concern is about survival at the moment.

It’s a time to be focused on our objectives, make few mistakes and get results as quickly as we can. When it comes to IT projects, it’s important not only to get a return on investment but to get that return quickly. Its maybe for this reason that my company seems to be bucking the trend and doing steady business whilst other vendors seems to be slowing down. Our accelerated approach to custom software is able to play a vital role in the survival of businesses across Australia as budgets get tightened, and we are expected to do more with less.

So if you are unfamiliar with our approach, I’ll take you through the highlights.

Before I describe what it is. I’ll tell you what its not.

• Its not Agile development, its more than that. Whilst we also use Agile to accelerate the process. This is a just a small piece of the puzzle.
• Its not an accelerator, its more that that. In the world of software development accelerators can be used to speed up the software development process. Examples might be controls or reporting tools. We do that too.
• Its not code reuse, its more than that. Code or portions of code can be used during development from previous projects to allow for a lean delivery. An easy example to understand is demonstrated with a simple log in screen. Most of our customers need a log in screen for their project, so do we reinvent the wheel each time? No! We go way beyond code reuse.

So what is it then?

Solentive have developed an ‘ultra accelerator’ that allows us to deliver reliable, innovative solutions in a fraction of the time that other developers can. The ultra accelerator can be used on practically any workflow oriented application and comes with native connectivity technology (BUS) to facilitate the integration with other systems.

The approach ‘displaces’ a mountain of engineering effort by using the ultra accelerator, where other companies would normally be piecing code together or writing code from scratch. Further customization can then be performed to tailor the solution to your specific requirements.

Further to all this, our customers benefit from a very stable code base, user acceptance testing is minimised and the system is fast tracked to production.

Business processes can be automated or largely automated meaning with rules engine technology and workflow design tools so the potential for a huge return on investment is also available. For the price of a standard approach to your project, we are able to include reporting and SLA monitoring tools to ensure that your workforce is always on task and you are able to identify leakage in your productivity. Do more with less! No really!

We have enjoyed some great implementations for our customers so I thought it may be interesting to share our approach.

If a jobs worth doing its worth doing well and its worth doing now!

Do you have project? A question about software development? Are you lonely or bored and just fancy a chat ?

The door is always open as they say.

I don’t know whats wrong with me this week. I just don’t seem to be able to resist the urge to write overly dramatic headlines. This one came from a weird train of thought I found myself having in a daydream like fashion on the way into work

Could we be at such a point in the ‘information age’ that if we haven’t automated your business by now, then you stand to fade away into the background wondering what happened.?

Quickly I realised that the answer was no. Stupid thought really. In fact I think we are some way away from it from many of us, but I then payed some more serious attention to a bigger question. If it IS coming, when will that day be?

In many ways we have technology available to us that is only limited by either our imagination or our courage to act. We are able to automate things that managers wouldn’t ever dream were possible. Its only our ignorance that prevents us from benefiting.

Some further food for thought. Since some businesses are find things tough right now… Imagine if you were able to automate some or all of what you did. You knew your customers better, you served customers better. Your service levels were better. Perhaps everything was better

Imagine if only you had the secret. Imagine how the competition would marvel at how you did it. Perhaps its not such a distant dream after all?

Grow in a slowdown and reduce your headcount…  Wow did I just say reduce your headcount. Erm what I meant to say was ’streamline your operations’ or ‘reduce you reliance in manual processes’.

Come on lets get real. There are some businesses out there that need to reduce costs right now and quickly. No-one likes loosing good people but its a harsh reality of business at the moment.

Whether this is part of your cost reduction strategy or not Business Process Automation is an important component in creating a leaner meaner fighting machine to weather the Recession storm that is now upon us and forecast to deepen.

We have recently put the finishing touches on our workflow automation ‘core’ we should really put some thought into giving it a fancy title shouldn’t we? We have been using this to connect to a businesses existing systems as a way of both monitoring the traffic of the workflow as well as having the ‘intelligence’ to assign task to other users. The intelligence in question is a series of business rule unique to your business.

Lets pick an industry. Say Logistics. A consignment is entered into the system for pick up and the system calculates the closest vehicle to pick it up. In its calculation the following rules are considered

• The the vehicle too large for the customers premises
• Is there room on the vehicle?
• Is the vehicle over weight?
• Will the extra job force the driver or exceed his hours or rest breaks

The system automatically notifies the driver, The driver accepts the job and the system texts the customer to confirm confirmation.

The rules in question are applicable to any industry but in this example we have built business logic into the role of Transport operations manager. The actions taken by the system are compliant with the companies policies for late pick up. The manager can handle more work and can focus time on account management or driver liaison which are more humanistic tasks.

If you need more clarification on Business Process Automation and what it can do for your business. Drop me a line. 0432 968684