Software Futures, the wholly owned business software solutions subsidiary of the JSE-listed MGX Group, has gone live with the first phase of its multimillion-rand implementation of Oracle`s e-Business Suite.
Software Futures, because of its rapid growth from 80 employees in 1999 to more than 500 employees in 2002, had multiple decentralised niche solutions distributed throughout the organisation with multiple manual processes.
"This placed an ever-increasing administrative load due to manual intervention and consolidation of data, inhibiting timely analysis of information critical to our decision-making," says Alan Gibbons, general manager at Software Futures.
When fully implemented by August, Software Futures will have an integrated Web-enabled CRM, project accounting, human resource, employee self-service and a back-office solution, providing the entire operation with a single view of its customers and projects, and ensuring significantly more efficient back-office operations.
"One of the key factors in Software Futures` opting for our e-Business Suite was the level of integration between the different disciplines within one product," says Sandy Redgate, alliance account manager, Enterprise Sales at Oracle SA.
"It provides everyone in the company with easy, browser-based, remote access to ensure that they have the information they need - information that is consistent, up to date and shared between various disciplines," says Redgate.
"Just as important to the company realising its CRM goals was Oracle`s ability to provide a single view of the customer throughout the organisation`s various operations - from marketing and sales through to project management and finance."
A major component of the expected ROI is derived from Oracle e-Business Suite being a truly integrated. Hardware, software and integration costs, as well as costs from manual integration efforts, are reduced substantially by taking such the integrated suite approach rather than implementing best-of-breed solutions.
"While we`re projecting a rapid return on our investment, we`re looking beyond that. This is a solution that not only improves operational efficiencies for the medium- and longer-term, but also targets the key focus area of every business today - the customer," notes Gibbons.
"In Software Futures` case, we adopted the best practices business processes inherent and pre-packaged in the e-Business Suite to standardise unaligned or otherwise inefficient business flows," he says.
"We chose to focus our resources in areas where we gain competitive differentiation rather than attempting to customise non-differentiating processes such as finance and HR." Software Futures is one of Oracle SA`s key strategic business partners, having attained top-level accreditation by becoming an Oracle EMEA Certified Technology and e-Business Suite Partner.
Oracle is the world`s largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit www.oracle.com.
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