Integration of a computer information system into a business

opening speech

Today it has become very fashionable to automate the business. General informatization is a fashionable phenomenon. Most often, the leaders of the companies themselves, which have sold these services, simply do not understand what they are buying. In their head, any CRM system becomes a kind of magic button that solves their organizational problems. What does it mean?

There is an enterprise that we will call “Horns and Hoofs”, the head of which heard from its fellow entrepreneurs about how it became better to work when the company began to use a new CRM program. Integrators took not so expensive, the project cost less than SAP or 1C: UPP. What does a person do under pressure of public opinion? Repeats!

If you have a thought “shouldn't you run a project in my company in order to automate a business?” - this publication is for you.

A little about automating business processes

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For a start talk about the right approach to the automation of business processes. It should be understood that any system integrator understands by business process a certain strict sequence of actions, which is quite predictable. In other words, all the conditions and variants of the development of events in this sequence are known. If not, this business process cannot be automated. Just an example:

A (automated business process): in our firm “Horns and Hoofs” secretary Maria Ivanovna sends any agreement only after personal approval (sighting) of the financial director Polygraph Polygraphovich and director Vladimir Ilyich.

S (non-automated business process): in our firm “Horns and Hoofs”, secretary Marya Ivanovna watches how Polygraph Polygraph behaves. If the director gave the dressing, it would be better for him to bring cognac after the planking, and if he smiles - coffee. At the same time, you can talk about a wage increase or take time off for a day without time off.

Yes, examples are exaggerated. But in my practice it was more than once. And the leadership for some reason wants to see the automation of the processes of class “C”. They believe that it is precisely such processes that need to be transferred to the program format, which is in fact not correct.

We can also single out partially-automated (class B) business processes, which, although they allow you to transfer yourself to the “program format,” but only partly. A vivid example is the control of freight (we had one such client). There are several machines that fulfill one order. A fixation is required: what kind of car and how much work was done after the fact (for example, one - 5 hours, the other - 3 hours), since it depends on what% of the total share of payment a particular driver will receive. Such data can only be entered by a person (in the case of our client, by the driver himself). The customer asked us to make “a magic button that will do it for them. And that she introduced everything authentically and did not need to recheck her. ” This is possible (having built a system of a bunch of IP telephony and a CRM program, I added several serious modules), but it is very financially intensive. The client abandoned his idea and began to enter data manually (although using the program to form a single report in it).
Further, it is required to break all business processes into categories of which there are several types, namely:

• global business processes (class B): they cover from 40% of enterprise employees and are associated with a large number of smaller ones. For example, automation of the concrete sales department (I had such a task during the period of employment for the 1s: Construction Organization Management project; I would like to note that even with a competent approach and the best specialists in the field of 1s, many people did not cope ), which affects sales, advertising, marketing, accounting, management, production, etc. Automation such processes are, but only after decomposing them into many subordinate small business processes. In fact, they are the goal of an automation project, and not the ultimate goal. Due to misunderstanding of this - many projects simply fail.
• routine business processes (class A): what constitutes up to 80% of the work of office plankton - vising documents, invoicing, receiving and archiving documents, issuing contracts. That is what business owners neglect, who think that the program can do it all (as an option - not so important). It seems to them that global business processes are more important than routine work. Entrepreneurs making up the requirements for the product fall into some kind of rage, trying to embrace the immense, focusing on their dreams and tasks, but forgetting about the problems and everyday tasks of subordinates. Most often, the customer is trying to make the program a universal tool for all occasions. The result - high cost, complexity of implementation, customer dissatisfaction.
• creative business processes (class C): such business processes are not automated. It is difficult to expand the work of an artist or a writer into formulas or sequences of actions, there are too many variable factors in them. Such processes cannot be decomposed into steps (how to predict the stages of the emergence of inspiration?). How do such processes appear in the company? Let's say you want to develop an idea for creating a viral advertisement by the marketing department. Or differentiate the activities of a group of companies and build a new business from scratch. Of course, you can select abstract stages - but their presence is not something useful in the system. Typically, such business processes require only the accounting of spent finance, which show how much it costs to achieve the goal. For this purpose, the “Projects” module, which is practically in every business automation system, is best suited.

Moreover, it is also necessary to divide the business processes of an enterprise by the degree of necessary completeness of information. So there are:

• business processes with a high degree of input data (A): these business processes provide a lot of information for management accounting, their management allows you to receive up to 50% of the data for decision-making. It is the management of such processes in the information system that is of the greatest interest to managers.
• business processes with an average degree of input data (B): these processes are important for managers and unimportant for employees. An example of this is the compilation of a report on the profits and losses of an enterprise.
• business processes with a low degree of input data (C): these processes are unimportant for managers and important for employees. An example is the amount of time an employee spends on a lunch break. For an employee, this is very important; lunch time is an opportunity to rest, even if there is work that needs urgent execution. For the manager - insignificant. He doesn’t care how much the employee eats if the tasks are performed on time.

Analyzing business processes, it is worth remembering that no matter how good a program is, it still requires data entry. The only thing that it removes from the person in this case is the need to re-enter and analyze data. But if you need to enter the amount of one hundred new product groups entering the warehouse, no one will do it for you.

Smashed? We obtain a classification of business processes, which are denoted by three letters (A, B or C). The most important and simplest is to automate processes marked with AAA, it is impossible - CCC. The automation plan is built correctly as follows: first, we automate business processes with AAA marking, then we enter into marking B and start with AAB, shifting the book by one digit to the left. Thus we reach the input of the second letter B, then proceed to ABB, etc., until the first letter C appears in the marking. All business processes with the presence of C in the labeling are automated only after discussing the process of automating the owners of the company and system integrators, since they are the most voluminous and costly.

About classes of implemented programs

Today there are many programs that automate any part of the business, or take as a basis the task of automating the entire business as a whole. Hence, there are numerous types of software for this purpose, such as: CRM, DMS, ECM, ERP, BPM, etc. In fact, there are not so many common types. Over the entire period of work as a system integrator, I identified for myself several simple types of automation programs (which will be most understandable to the client):

• accounting software: everyone understands “1c”, no comments are needed;
• programs for management accounting: this software allows the owner to see not only what is necessary for the tax inspectorate, that is, to see the real picture of the work of the enterprise;
• programs for organizing workflow: if your company is a document creating organization (for example, you are a real estate appraiser) and your final product is a document that can be standardized, then this program is for you, because the entire business is built on the movement of documents.

All the other software classifications are the concern of the system integrator, who after analyzing the enterprise selects the most suitable product.

It is worth noting an interesting fact - some system integrators from the United States tend to abandon the term ERP (all-in-one), as modern CRM systems have become a little different from ERP-programs due to increased market requirements for the functionality of the program.

The main mistakes in the implementation of business automation projects

Consider the most common mistakes that managers have when launching automation projects for their business:

• organizational problems are not disclosed or they are motivated by the reluctance to correct them with phrases like: “If we work like this, then it means that is right!” (businessmen, accept the idea that business consultants know better how to work properly! If you don’t want to change anything in your business - why did you call them?);
• global business processes are selected for automation (no need to try to embrace the immense, system integrators are happy to work on the principle: “Any whim for your money.” But can it be better to get rid of the routine first, and then plan “flight to the stars”?) ;
• exact criteria for the transition of a business process from one state to another are not highlighted (any state of the system should be described formally, without emotional coloring; otherwise, the computer simply does not understand what you want from it, it cannot base its actions on emotions or intuition );
• try to save on automation (if you want to save on the process of building savings - something in your logic went wrong);
• formulation of technical specifications independently instead of setting tasks (well, a person who has not implemented a single system integration project cannot write correctly what technicians need to do, they simply will not understand it);
• implementation of the software on their own (the most terrible mistake that will lead a project to collapse with a probability of 99%, when the introduction of the program is put as a task to the system administrator who is not interested in it - he will not see the extra money - and who does not have the necessary competence ;
• It is program A that will solve our problems (any platform, that is, a programmable program, allows you to solve your problems if the system integrator has competence. In other words, choosing the right integrator, not the program - the degree of achievement of the goals depends on it).

Implementation plan for the system integration project

How then to implement a system integration project? I will give a brief plan on how to build work in this direction:

1. Set the most important goals of the project (specific), highlight the requirements for the system;
2. Send requirements and goals to several system integrators from the city (those who are ready to come to you from another city or region will set a very large price tag, they must pay for the employee’s trip);
3. To conduct a comparative analysis of the proposals, choose the average for the price;
4. Require writing a technical task (how to do it correctly - we will look at another article), which will describe not only the implementation process, but also optimize the business process map;
5. Highlight one person responsible for the acceptance of work and ask for the process of finalizing and implementing the program in stages. If the project is supervised by several people - everyone will try to shove their vision of “good” into it, it will be great if the person in charge is a deputy manager or a person who has managed to work with most of the departments;
6. Agree to training in the program and technical support (you need to be able to use any tool, you need a consultant who will be available when you need it, and not when he has time for it).

If you stick to this simple action plan, the business automation project will end well for your company. I hope the reader was interested in what was said in this short article.