Contents - Connect-World

Business Development
information storage for longer periods.
In parallel, the new modus
operandi of companies as virtual corporations
demand more users to generate,
process and transmit information
through firewalls, creating new
and unexpected volumes of information.
Companies need to be well prepared
to deal with this dynamic data
mountain.
Pressure has never been greater on
companies to lower operating costs,
whilst improving governance and productivity
to reduce time to market.
Economic uncertainty, increased competition,
compliance requirements
standards have placed heavy burdens
on the administrative and information
technology systems of smaller businesses.
Many of Asia Pacifics larger enterprises,
the early adopters of Internetbased
applications, have weathered
the economic storm by operating efficiently
as e-businesses. To survive
alongside this first wave of e-business
adoption, smaller organisations must
similarly transform their operations
and processes.
Desperate to keep
up
So what is stopping these
smaller firms from
adopting e-business
Factors such as fear of
cost and of disruption to
daily business are uppermost.
Many companies
find some business
applications difficult to
use, forcing up implementation
costs.
The cost of keeping up
with technology and new
business processes is
high but the cost of noncompliance
can be even
higher, often resulting in
higher costs, lower productivity,
squeezed margins,
weak corporate governance
and ultimately
imperilled viability.
In addition, failure to ensure connectivity
with trading partners and meet
customer service-level commitments
leads trading partners to label ones
company as being difficult to do business
with.
It is imperative that smaller companies
be able to compete with their
peers and larger organisations. In the
Internet age, it is too easy for dissatisfied
customers to switch suppliers, or
for business partners to drop lower
value resellers. Exasperated employees
slump to lower productivity and
may leave, resulting in a talent drain, a
vicious cycle that is difficult to break.
Positioning for growth
Keeping up is a survival strategy. Just
reacting is doomed to fail. The focus
must therefore be on going on the
offensive - playing to win. Increasing
competitiveness will increase shareholder
value and attract trading partners.
Companies need to achieve
more with less and do so rapidly.
In the effort to create value, smaller
enterprises face several obstacles to
improvement. The organisations
themselves typically operate in functional
or operational silos. They are
not organised in theory, or practice,
for seamless business process management.
Figure 1: Mid-market business pressures.
Communication is manual rather than
automated among departments and
with trading partners. Management
reporting is typically periodic and
fragmented. Inquiries from stakeholders,
customers or suppliers cannot
be confidently or accurately
answered in a timely fashion.
Disparate and disconnected business
systems create complexity and make it
challenging to manage by fact. For
example, when making an order fulfilment
promise, is it based on the manufacturing
inventory status or the
inventory position in the order management
system Which one is continuously
updated Has the information
in these two systems any relation
to what is actually available to promise
in the warehouse
The dispersion of management and
information leads to a lack of control
and visibility. The result is an error
prone, inefficient business with a penchant
for making decisions based on
complex and untimely information.
This is not a characteristic that proclaims,
Were easy to do business
with. Smaller enterprises need access
to information, in real time to ensure a
handle on the business.
To remain viableand more desirably
competitive, with a focus on growth
smaller companies must bring knowledge
and people together to better
manage their business. They must
automate and connect business
processes within the company and
work to enhance relationships with
trading partners. While a tried and
tested strategy for large businesses,
strategic adoption of IT is now finally
the focus for smaller enterprises.
The reason for the lag of the small and
mid-market segment has been the
perception that
enterprise software
is too complex, too
costly to implement
and maintain and
suited only for large
companies.
Smaller organisations
make
their move
There are two
dynamics, which are
motivating smaller
enterprises to take
action. First, many
of the large companies
are now forcing
their smaller trading
partners to comply
with more advanced
requirements. To
comply with this
edict, smaller enterprises
question the
need to change. Weve been in business
and have managed just fine so
far, havent we Our existing systems
are good enougharent they But in
reality, is organisational data available
in real-time and accurately enough to
provide information that management
can be confident in Looking back at
the challenges presented previously,
the answer is, by and large, no.
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