Jane Thomson, MD of Softworx, an EOH company, says the sharing of information with other people, inside and outside the company, to create mutual benefit, is what is at the heart of BI. It is, however, more than just sharing the information, but sharing the reasoning behind it. Today, BI has to be able to cope with considerable increase in both size (data) and speed (real-time). While continuing to integrate with operational processes, BI is also more aligned with strategy in the present competitive landscape.
One of the biggest issues South Africa is yet to overcome is operating behind the curve, Thomson believes. As is custom practise in most businesses, a strategic plan is developed over a five to seven-year period, but the problem arises when companies monitor and execute the business against an annual budget, which is often six months old.
“They are, thus, operating behind the curve and could close this gap by using BI tools. Covering the entire organisation's performance from a strategic perspective to an operational one, BI is a powerful way to gain the illusive single view of a company. BI solutions have made the imaginable possible - information flowing in real-time up and down the business, across organisational boundaries and out to partners, suppliers and customers, providing a snapshot of current operations and a basis for objectively refining your business in the future. To maintain an innovative position in the market, companies need to have this type of interactive software flowing through the business.”
Through joining BI with ERP, businesses can link strategy to decisions, to execution, and to insight. This offers three main advantages. The first is greater efficiency. As intelligence is embedded directly into business processes, staff on the ground are able to make appropriate decisions, such as cross-selling appropriate products to customers who call in for support. Secondly, the insight offered allows people to use knowledge of where people are within an organisation, including their strategic involvement and objectives, to automatically offer them appropriate information rather than forcing them to search for it. Lastly, businesses profit from greater flexibility as changes to business processes are driven directly by analytics, with every level of staff being given the tools they need to understand the bigger strategy and make more effective decisions within their day-to-day work.
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Softworx
Softworx is a successful South African business applications company that prides itself in being able to deliver world-class products to its extensive customer base, which includes a number of Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Softworx supports clients in industries ranging from manufacturing, retail, distribution and financial, to supporting various government entities. The company is dedicated to marketing, implementing and providing support for its range of complementary software products to medium and large enterprises that require effective solutions to optimise their business processes.
Softworx has positioned itself as a leading provider of business applications in South Africa, specialising in end-to-end business solutions. The company prides itself on being able to deliver true value to its customers through the implementation of business solutions based on a powerful combination of leading edge products and consultancy. As a wholly owned subsidiary of EOH, Softworx has increased the number of services and products that can be offered to its customers from within the group.
EOH
EOH is a business and technology solutions provider creating lifelong partnerships by developing business and IT strategies, supplying and implementing solutions and managing enterprise-wide business systems and processes for medium to large clients.
EOH operates in the following three clusters of business units as a fully integrated business:
Technology - Through a number of subsidiary companies, EOH is able to sell, implement and support a range of world-class business applications, including ERP, CRM, business intelligence, advanced planning and scheduling, e-commerce and manufacturing execution systems (MES).
Consulting - Concentrated under the EOH Consulting brand are business units offering services ranging from strategic and business process consulting, project services, change management, supply chain optimisation and education.
Outsourcing - EOH offers comprehensive maintenance and support of client's IT infrastructure and applications through the rendering of full IT outsourcing, application hosting and managed services. In addition, EOH offers full business process outsourcing (BPO) services.
EOH has a presence in all major centres in South Africa and operates in the rest of Africa.
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