USING TECHNOLOGY

To keep your business moving forward in the current economic climate, you need to go beyond merely accepting technology. You need to excel through technology and continually ask yourself where the next advance could take your business. Questions like "how can we improve our service,efficiency and profitability with this new technology?" ought to be constantly asked in organizations today. For most businesses the investment in their I.T. infrastructure is a signicant proportion of their budget.

We are however, not surprised to find that the majority of businesses we encounter do not utilize technology to its full potential. Sometimes through fear of the unknown or indeed potential costs, sometimes through lack of knowledge. This is understandable since a business needs to concentrate on its own industry to remain competitive. This doesn't leave a lot of time for learning about new technologies and how they can benefit your business. This leads to an investment with good intentions but one that never quite pays dividends.

As an example, manual data input and more importantly re-input (where the data is already available but needs to be formatted slightly differently) can consume large amounts of your valuable human resource and lead to a significant cost overhead. With the aid of technology this cost can be drastically reduced and the technology itself is now starting to show a return on its investment.

We recently came across an example of this in a company that was setting up an accounts system. The company had been formed about 10 months previously and were keeping their accounts records on a spreadsheet. They had recently decided to move to a well known software accounts package and had thousands of entries to make in the new accounts software. We discovered they were manually transferring this information and estimated the total time it would take to complete the task at 3 man weeks. Having had previous knowledge of this system we suggested they simply make a few adjustments to the spreadsheet and import it into the accounts package using the built in functionality. This approach reduced their workload to just a few hours. This is a very simple example of how I.T. knowledge can be applied inexpensively.

There are many other ways to ensure maximum return on technology investment and CTL would be happy to provide an analysis of your I.T. systems and infrastructure in order to maximise your profit from this important asset.

Unnecessary duplication of effort costs money. Look for ways to use technology to prevent this duplication.

If a task is repeated then it's usually a candidate for automation. Ctl can show you ways of freeing up your human resource and automating many tasks that are currently performed by hand.

Where are processes and procedures being held up in your business? Do you suffer from late stock deliveries or have to stockpile to ensure you don't run out. Supply chain management can save you having to carry large amounts of stock or losing orders because you couldn't supply.

We have gained a large amount of experience by working with companies to help them reach their technological potential. Let us share that experience with you.