Insight Report: Farewell to paper processes
Organisations are under economic pressure to get ‘more for less’ from their existing IT investments. One way to do this is to use IT to streamline business processes – and especially to reduce the use of paperbased documents. To achieve this, organisations need enterprise content management and electronic workflow systems. But how well do these systems work in practice and what’s the key to getting the best out of the technology? This Insight Report answers these questions. New NCC Research (page 4) casts light on the take-up of document capture technology. Technology expert Richard Jeffrey-Cook explains the business case for electronic forms solutions (page 8), while case studies of St Helens NHS Trust (page 12) and Centaur Media (page 18) show how the technology can work in practice.
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Insight Report: Inventory management in a volatile world
In times of economic uncertainty anything that can provide
a competitive edge could prove critical to a company’s survival.
Understanding supply chains can make all the difference. Effective
inventory management requires real-time integration of information
from internal sources, suppliers, partners and customers with an
eye on past trends and future expectations to enable an organisation
to react quickly to sudden changes and therefore meet customer demands.
So how well are organisations managing and automating their inventory
processes? We report on NCC research which looks at some of the
issues (page 4). Experts Chris Turner and Duncan Alexander from
Stratabridge explain how tailored inventory management can deliver
a competitive advantage (page 12), and case studies from Gist (page
8) and Toshiba Europe (page 16) reveal their experiences.
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Insight Report: Virtualisation – Aligning to the Business Strategy
‘All the rage’, ‘definitely here to stay’, ‘enterpriseready’…
virtualisation’s perceived ability to address many of IT management’s
biggest issues – reducing costs, enabling rapid deployment and improving
system availability – is winning it lots of plaudits. But, to quote
Clive Longbottom of Quocirca (page 8), one of the problems with
virtualisation is that it works. In other words, the technology’s
ability to generate immediate cost savings and launch companies
on the path to cloud computing may cause organisations to become
lax in their approach. The message is you have to be careful and
plan for the long-term benefits as well as the short-term. But as
the case studies on pages 16 and 20 from BAM Nuttall and WaveCrest
make clear, virtualisation can produce high levels of user satisfaction
and strong project rewards.
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Insight Report: Electronic Rostering: Optimising workforce productivity
Organisations in both the public and private sectors are under
severe pressure to find ways to provide more efficient services.
And with employee costs such a major overhead, rostering software
is well worth considering for those organisations who need to schedule
their staff across shifts in order to maintain an effective level
of operation. In this Insight Report, we look at the latest
research into the take-up of electronic rostering (page 4), with
additional expert opinion from Michael Dean at the National Computing
Centre (page 8). Elsewhere, the reality of what this kind of technology
investment can produce is shown by case studies featuring the East
of England Ambulance Service (page 14) and West Midlands Police
(page 18).
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Insight Report: Virtualisation – Delivering Business Benefits
Virtualisation appears to be on almost every company’s agenda
and is rapidly becoming a key element of IT strategies. In many
ways, as our page 4 research article points out, the virtues of
virtualisation are almost too good to be true: lower costs, better
performance and ‘greener’ IT. But virtualisation is not always a
quick fix and requires both time and money to benefit fully from
the technology. The issues around virtualisation are examined by
Ovum Butler’s Roy Illsley (page 8), while NCC research and Computacenter
experts highlight the different opportunities and challenges presented
by virtualising servers (pages 12 and 14) and desktops (pages 22
and 24). Bottom line? Any technology adopted by an industry giant
like Nationwide (page 18) is worth a closer look.
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Insight Report: Document Management for Disaster Recovery
We like to think we live in a digital age but paper still plays
a key role in most organisations. Yet paper documents can easily
be lost or misfiled and are vulnerable to disasters like fire or
floods – not to mention the inefficiency and literal waste of space
that paper, as opposed to electronic documents, represents. With
electronic document management (EDM) now a well-understood technology
with many successful implementations, this Insight Report considers
paper and its alternatives – including research into the takeup
of EDM by UK companies (page 4), advice from document management
expert Malcolm Beach of In- Form Consult (page 8), and case studies
of two major EDM software users, The Access Bank UK (page 14) and
the Peverel property services group (page 18).
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Insight Report: Field service – moving to the next level
Companies running teams of engineers and providing field service
operations face a tricky dilemma made worse by the recession: how
to meet increasing demand for improved customer service while at
the same time streamlining their own costs and operational efficiency.
Cell phones and other mobile devices have revolutionised companies’
ability to keep in touch with their service engineers, but running
a slick operation involves a lot more – including having the right
field force management applications back at base. In this Insight
Report, we review the take-up of this technology, with original
market research (page 4), together with case studies of existing
users Anglian Water (page 14) and Konica Minolta (page 22). We also
feature expert advice from Professor Moshe BenBassat, chairman and
CEO of ClickSoftware (page 8).
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Insight Report: Bridging the Divide – Unifying paper and digital
information
Combining paper and electronic corporate information makes
obvious business sense. The best way to do it isn’t so obvious.
What is clear is that at a time of recession, paperbased information
is an anomalous overhead that organizations would do well to eradicate
or reduce. Technology – in the shape of cheaper multi-function peripherals
(MFPs), electronic document management (EDM) and workflow systems
– now offers a viable way to bring paper into the electronic fold.
So how does it work in practice? In this report, we present research
into how organizations can streamline and integrate their document
handling (page 4); report the views of DM expert Martin Waldron
(page 8); and provide two case studies of UK organizations who have
successfully tested the technology (pages 14 and 18).
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Insight Report: Source-to-Pay: improving the bottom line
In a time of economic uncertainty, it is vital to make business
processes as streamlined and efficient as possible. And no area
has a bigger impact on an organisation’s bottom-line profitability
than its purchasing of goods and services. So how efficient, typically,
is the management of this source-to-pay cycle? We report on NCC
research into progress among UK companies (page 4). But automating
the source-to-pay process is not just a matter of installing new
technology – it involves a range of people and management issues.
So we carry commentary from independent expert David Court (page
8) and Atos Consulting’s David Harrower (page 24) on how you can
best achieve this, together with case studies of organisations that
have already taken this route – the Countess of Chester Hospital
Trust (page 14), Specsavers (page 20) and the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority (page 28).
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Insight Report: Enhancing Customer Communications
Companies have spent heavily on their CRM systems, but the
most important part of customer communication management remains
the humble document – the letters, statements, marketing messages
and contracts companies send out to their customers and prospects.
And how many firms have focused properly on this area? Customer
retention should be a key goal for any organisation, and clearly
one way of keeping your customers satisfied is to provide them with
communications that are tailored to their needs and that they can
easily understand. This Insight Report looks into the customer communications
management strategy followed by companies (page 4), and how well
or badly they tailor and target their customer documents. We present
comment from leading CRM analyst Nick Hewson (page 8), together
with case studies of two companies who have worked with EMC Document
Sciences to actively upgrade their direct mail and other communications
channels.
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Insight Report: Unified communications – merging separate worlds
The integration of computers and telephony has been debated
for years but the actual application of the idea is still developing.
By combining voice and data systems, companies can cut costs and
provide flexible communications to their increasingly far-flung
and mobile workforce. Yet, according to our latest research (page
4), only 5% of organisations have implemented a unified communications
environment. This Insight Report looks at the market from the perspective
of two organisations who have already stepped up to the plate –
the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW)
and accountancy firm Gambitsis Partners, profiled on pages 14 and
18. Their experiences clarify the business benefits and issues around
unified communications. Meanwhile, our own research and the expert
advice of Butler Group’s Mark Blowers (page 8) add further insight
to this largely untapped opportunity.
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Unica: The Use of Web Analytics Software
Web analytics is the process of analysing the behaviour of
visitors to a website. The aim is to help organisations maximise
the value of their internet marketing and improve the design of
their website. By understanding visitor behaviour, organisations
can tailor their marketing initiatives to attract, retain and grow
the value of customers. To see how companies are progressing in
using this relatively new marketing tool PMP research has surveyed
a cross section of leading organisations for their opinions on the
use of web analytics software. To download a copy of the results
click below:
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