Make your technology work harder for your business
A system that works well should make your business easier to run.
It should save time, reduce unnecessary work, make information available where it is needed, help people make better decisions and give customers a better experience. It should be reliable, understandable and economical to operate.
And as your business changes, it should help rather than get in the way.
When that isn’t happening, there is usually an opportunity to make things better.
Get more from what you already have
A better system doesn’t necessarily mean replacing everything you own.
Often the greatest improvement comes from making existing systems work together properly.
Information can move automatically instead of being entered twice. A process that currently passes through several people can be simplified. An older system that still performs an important job can be connected to newer technology rather than discarded. A specialised commercial product can provide most of what is required, with integration or purpose-built software filling the remaining gaps.
The result can be considerably less expensive, less disruptive and less risky than replacing an entire system.
Where something genuinely new is required, it can be designed and built around the result you need.
Either way, you get the benefit of the most appropriate combination of existing systems, proven products and new development — rather than paying to reinvent things that already work.
Solve the whole problem
The visible problem is not always the real one.
A slow piece of software may actually be an information-flow problem. Repeated data entry may exist because two otherwise good systems don’t communicate. A customer-service problem may originate several processes further back in the business.
Looking at the whole system — people, processes, information and technology — gives you a better chance of fixing the cause rather than paying repeatedly to treat the symptoms.
It also reduces the risk of solving one problem and inadvertently creating another.
That systems perspective comes from more than forty years working with information technology, including large systems, software development, integration and professional technical education, including technical training delivered under contract to IBM.
For you, that experience has a practical purpose: better technical decisions, fewer expensive wrong turns, and solutions designed around the business rather than around a particular technology.
Use new technology where it gives you an advantage
The range of things that can now be achieved economically continues to expand.
Artificial intelligence is part of that change. It can provide capabilities that were previously difficult or impractical, and it can also change the cost and speed with which some systems can be developed.
Where those capabilities give you a worthwhile advantage, they can be incorporated into the solution.
Where established technology will do the job better, more reliably or more economically, there is no reason to replace it simply because something newer has arrived.
You get the technology that best fits the job.
Get the capability the job requires
A problem may require one experienced specialist for a few days. Another may need analysts, architects, developers and other specialists working together over a much longer period.
You can draw on the capability required for the particular job rather than having the solution constrained by a fixed team.
MELLY McKENZIE can provide individual consultants and contractors or assemble a larger team from an established network of experienced technology professionals.
That gives you one place to bring the problem, with the technical capability scaled to suit the solution.
Start with what you want to improve
Perhaps something costs too much. Takes too long. Creates too many errors. Requires too much manual work. Doesn’t connect properly. Is difficult for customers or staff to use. Can’t cope with the volume you now need. Or prevents you doing something that would otherwise make good business sense.
Those are problems worth solving.
Tell us what you would like to work better.