|
|
System
Label
7 Lessons learnt
Over the past 10 years and, in particular, in the last 24 months, System
label has learnt many lessons:
- Use
technology – The
team at System Label has proven that a small company can take advantage
of the benefits of modern IT systems at a very manageable cost provided
that they have a precise definition of what they want to do. It’s
vitally important to define the requirements of the project and stick
to them.
- Delegate
more –
In hindsight, Buckley admitted that he would have delegated more. That
said, he would still have been involved in the project, the specification
and development of the different modules.
- Use your
senior people – carefully! – Maurice Buckley put a lot of
time and effort into the project - time that he admits, “wasn’t
covered by any grant or invoice”. The project was time consuming
but did mean that Buckley got to see the system at the coalface and
therefore got a solution that precisely met the organisations needs.
It also gave him a better idea of where he wanted the systems to go
and therefore allowed for better strategic thinking. Given the nature
of the MD position, this could only have happened for a short period
of time.
- Set
clear milestones -
Clear milestones should be set for delivery of key functionality and
organisations shouldn’t give in to evolution. It’s important
to do what you set out to do “put a stake in the sand” andthen
refine the project from there. “It’s very hard to hit a moving
target”, commented Buckley.
- Have
strategic vision –
It’s important not to set off along the eBusiness path without
having a good idea of where it is you want to be long term –
System Label had a very clear idea of where the system needed to be
in 10 years time. By having this vision, the organisation knew that
what they were doing was in line with that long-term goal.
8
Future Plans
Now that System label has a solid back-end system, it will be reasonably
straightforward for the company to add functionality in the future. The
pace at and order in which this functionality is implemented will be determined
by market forces and internal resources
This new functionality includes:
- A customer
extranet module – Allow clients to see the production status
of their jobs.
- Online
ordering – Allow customers to get prices and place orders online.
- Job
tracking – Job tracking would allow both customers and employees
to see where, in the system, a job is at any one time – it is envisaged
that barcode technology would be used to facilitate this process.
- Integration
with accounting system– System Label wants to integrate its system
into Sybase, its corporate accounting package.
- Move
to SQL – eventually, the MS Access database will become insufficient
for the needs of the company and it will be necessary to move to a more
corporate backend database such as SQL.
- Increased
Updates – The organisation is also looking at ways to make
the system less ‘semi-live’ (i.e. daily) and move it to a
more ‘live’ updating system. This will become more important
as data transfer increases and stock levels become less.
|
|
