SAWR to new heights
SAWR offers full-cycle consulting services by helping companies:
- Maximize the Return on Investment of your existing employee-based applications
- Determine what type of technology solution is best (purchasing software may not be the best solution)
- Select the appropriate vendor and/or software, if needed
- Maintain or establish the best business processes to accomplish targeted business objective and leverage the technical solution
- Manage the project and/or implementation
- Establish efficient and cost effective post-implementation support
Leveraging existing technology
Existing technology can frequently be leveraged to enhance the employee’s experience and the administrator’s effectiveness. Existing technology may be underperforming because:
A) Inadequate initial design/configuration – For a variety of reasons, the initial implementation of your existing software may not have been properly configured to match your business processes and maximize its value.
B) Outdated design/configuration – Business processes and policies evolve and change over time. If it’s been a while, the configuration of your existing software may no longer be optimally supporting your current business process.
C) Under utilized functionality – Most software is under utilized. The premise here is not necessarily to use all the functionality an application has to offer but to evaluate if there is any under utilized functionality that has a significant ROI.
With a background in corporate Human Resource management, SAWR Systems Consulting knows that simply throwing money at new technical solutions seldom achieves the desired results. SAWR Systems Consultants have a proven track record of balancing business processes with available technology to fully leverage existing technology.
If there is no existing technology or it is truly time to investigate the replacement of existing technology, one aspect that is frequently overlooked is the type of technology.
Technological solutions come in a variety of types:
A) Traditional licensed software – this can be represented by simple “shrink-wrapped” software solution through major ERP (SAP, Oracle/PeopleSoft) implementations.
B) Service Providers – Where a vendor administers the software solution on their servers. Payroll and Benefits administration are commonly provided by such vendors like ADP
C) Software as a Service (SaaS) – Software applications that are provided as a service usually via the web. Vendors like SuccessFactors and Authoria
There are numerous permutations of each type with different advantages and disadvantages. Depending on business requirements, resources and time one or a combination of types may be the best solution.
With experience with all types of software solutions, from a functional and a technical perspective, SAWR Systems Consulting can help you identify the optimum type of technology to achieve your business objectives and maximize your ROI.
Vendor and/or software selection may be determined in conjunction with the type of solution or it may be made independently, usually after a type is selected. This is frequently where organizations start their analysis of software solutions. Before selecting the appropriate software, it is critical to identify: A) The primary business objectives (these should be measurable to validate ROI); and, B) The critical business processes to be supported that cannot change. When evaluating software and vendors, knowing what to ask and when can be the difference between a long-term solutions that supports your business process and have a high ROI or long-term problems that can actually have a negative ROI. Post-implementation support by the vendor is as, and possibly more, important than selecting the best fit software. An application that fits your business process more closely from a vendor with poor post-implementation support may result in lower ROI than selecting an application that fits your business processes less closely but the vendor provides exceptional support.
With a blend of corporate experience (having conducted numerous software evaluations); consulting experience responding to Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and the breadth of actual implementation experience, SAWR Systems Consultants are uniquely qualified to facilitate effective vendor/software selection.
Evaluation of business processes is an area where many companies inadvertently undermine their ROI. All too often, the focus is on how a process is performed and attempts to find a software solution that matches that process exactly when the actual focus should be on the why. If the critical business objective is achieved, how it is achieved is frequently secondary in importance. This is, of course, not always the case. There are circumstances where how a business process is performed is critical but this should be relatively rare. When preparing to evaluate software solutions, the critical business requirements and process should be identified in advance. Again, this should be a relatively short list. Other important business requirements and processes should also be identified and noted as being subject to change to maximize ROI. Note that a software redesign or a new software implementation is an opportunity to reevaluate existing business processes and the business objectives they are to achieve. There are frequently reasons to change process/requirements that are independent of a software change.
SAWR Systems Consultants have years of corporate management experience providing them with the insight to ask effective questions that uncover the true critical business requirements and processes that are needed to achieve the identified business objectives. Putting this experience to work for you will truly maximize the return your organization gets on its technology dollar.
Without expert project management and execution, the value of determining the appropriate technology solution; selecting the right software solution/vendor, identifying the critical business processes can be lost. The identification and scheduling of project resources; the scheduling of tasks and activities, risk identification and mitigation and budgeting are all needed to be successful. Proper execution of these and other project management activities help insure that business objectives are achieved. A lack of proper execution in any one of these areas will, at the very least, reduce the ROI and may even result in project failure.
Having successfully managed large and small projects some under budget SAWR Systems Consultants will help you achieve the most visible step of a software implementation.
Possibly the most easily overlooked component to long-term success is establishing the processes, procedures and protocols to effectively and efficiently support the new business processes as well as the software solution “tool” designed to support them. How the business processes will be supported on an ongoing basis needs to be identified and established prior to going live with the new software solution. The scope of the support requirements will vary but the importance of them does not. SAWR System Consultants know the importance of post-implementation support and have designed and established effective processes to ensure long-term success.