The hype surrounding mobile technology and its benefits to business is so overwhelming that managers could be forgiven for thinking all they have to do is link their employees’ smartphones to the company network to see profits soar. Naturally, the process is more complex, and pitfalls abound.
“Mobility, like any other business strategy, is a process that needs forethought and planning if companies are to see real benefits,” says Daniel Hall, VP of sales and marketing at Magic Software SA.
It is very common to see IT systems being underutilized, leading many companies to question the Return on Investment (ROI) promised by industry and product experts.
What should be examined are not the promises of suppliers, but the internal processes of implementation, maintenance and integration. The effort does not end at the purchase contract. Quite the contrary, installing an IT system is just the beginning of the most important and laborious phase to maximize its benefit.
By now, we should all accept the basic truth, that it makes good business sense and is more cost effective to keep a customer happy than to find a new one. We’re determined to see our customers succeed. Some of our clients have been with us longer than many marriages – almost 25 years, which is a great track record for a 30-year-old company.
Our customers have transitioned from DOS to Windows, to the Web and beyond, and have experienced an innumerable number of integrations and upgrades of their CRM and ERP systems. They needed help maneuvering around a few stumbling blocks that, had they hard-coded, would have been long-term disasters both technically and for their business operations.
Many of them will admit that they did not readily embrace some of the changes we enabled for them, and we had to drag them kicking and screaming through the processes – but, in the end, they were glad we did.
