One of the biggest problems many companies have these days is properly leveraging all of the technology available to them. Of course, the type and amount of technology each company needs depends on the business. A manufacturer, for example, will need a very different type of software than a company oriented to service or sales. But no matter what the product or service, the first—and the biggest—mistake that most business owners make is to only spend money when they are forced to. They think of technology as a necessary evil, rather than a tool that can help them to grow.
Finding the right technology for your business will save you both time and money, says Al Moore, one of the founders and four principals at Marathon Consulting in Virginia Beach. Marathon Consulting specializes in serving mid-tier businesses, non-profit organizations, and local governments in the mid-Atlantic region. The company offers a wide range of Information Technology consulting services, utilizing proven IT and management methodologies to achieve world-class results.
Al has spent more than 30 years in the IT industry, with much of that dedicated to IT Services. He focuses on assisting clients in areas ranging from manufacturing to government, healthcare and ship repair and port operations, optimize the use of IT to meet their business goals.
“We help business owners focus on how technology can get them the quickest payback,” says Al. Some of his suggestions include:
Look at Packaged Software. “Packaged software has evolved to the state where, without a whole lot of effort, you can now find a pretty strong package that will meet 80 or 90 percent of your needs right out of the box, and at a fairly low cost. Then you can just focus on filling in the gaps,” he says.
Enterprise Reporting. A lot of small businesses have certain functions done on several systems and they spend a lot of time pulling that data together, primarily usually using Excel, he explains. “We have been really effective in going in and helping them figure out how to extract that data, cleanse it, and put it into a data mart or something that is database based so that it is scalable and presented in a much more timely way and with more control over the integrity of the data.”
Intranet Portal Development. Another money-saving technology that can help a business grow without increasing back office staff is Intranet portal applications. “We’ve had a lot of success with applications that can be made available to managers, to staff, and to customers so that the company can offer services without the cost,” Al adds.
Enterprise-Wide System. Developing an enterprise-wide system involves helping a company identify what technology is needed “from the minute you get a sales lead or an order until it goes out the door and is invoiced.” Obviously, it takes many complicated steps to complete this process, and Al and his consultants help companies to “weed out all of the noise and get to the two or three systems that really have a viable solution.”
That, he believes, is one of the most valuable things he can do for a company. It allows them to reduce the risk of making big system change, getting halfway through the implementation and finding out you’ve left something out.
The cost of the software is not the major cost, he mentions. These days the cost of implementing is about three times the cost of the software. “You can’t afford a do-over and we’ve never had one in the 24 years we’ve been doing this,” Al says.
Very few business owners are also software experts, and many fall into the trap of thinking only about their current needs when purchasing new software. “You need to think ahead,” says Al. “Think about what your company will need not just today, but next year and the year after.”
