Multis Group

7 . Lessons Learnt

There were many lessons learnt by the team in Multis during the eBusiness project:

• Have a solid infrastructure – If a company wants to grow, it needs to have a solid IT infrastructure on which to build that growth.
• It’s a business thing – It’s important to identify where the company is going and to plan the eBusiness strategy from there – it should be based on the company’s business requirements. Don’t go into the project assuming that all the IT systems will need to be changed to support eBusiness – they may not have to be. The technology should work to the advantage of the company and be used to deliver performance and results within the business.
• Vendors – Take time in choosing both software and software vendors - it’s vitally important to select the right one for the company. An organisation shouldn’t feel compelled to follow the crowd as the standard systems like Sage or SAP may not suit the needs of a particular organisation.
• Involve everyone – The senior management team should work with external consultants to put the strategy in place - development of the system should involve the staff who use the systems on a day-to-day basis. “Don’t just impose a new system on people as a management directive”, commented Keenan. It’s important to understand staff requirements of the system and the processes they follow on a day-to-day basis. Once that information is on hand, it makes it much easier to implement the strategy. If there is resistance to change, a new system will never be implemented properly.

8 . Future Plans

Although the eBusiness Accelerator fund element of their eBusiness strategy is complete, development of the functionality and design of the Multis eBusiness system will be ongoing. Like many of the organisations that took part in the Enterprise Ireland program, the needs of both Multis and its customers are dynamic and the system needs to react to these changes in requirement on an ongoing basis.

Two specific areas for development are:

• Bar-coding – In order to increase visibility of the process and to increase trackability/traceability, bar-coding will be put in place on both sites.
• Front End – The main area of change in the system will be in the front end, adding more functionality and new services. These changes will allow Multis to have seamless integration with its customers systems.