Technological advances spawn
instant headlines and offer rapid change to users, and the launch of
the new overnight sensation obscures the underlying nature of
technology development, which is a more gradual and systematic process.
Enterprise
IT systems respond best to clear development plans over comfortable
timelines. To devise such plans successfully is a major, deep-rooted
challenge for any organization. Gray areas in the plans place a burden
on IT people, who are already fairly stressed.
“Two out of three IT managers say they’re kept awake
at night worrying about work, and 75% admit ongoing anxiety about
application performance concerns, according to a recent online survey
of 272 systems and applications managers conducted by TechWeb Network
Research on behalf of OpTier, a provider of business transaction
management software. InformationWeek.com is part of the TechWeb
network.” See Tech Pros Are Worrywarts, Says Study
In the realm of CRM
systems, executives are clear that they want enhanced performance, and
increased business agility, but they are also certain that they want to
keep the existing deployment where possible, and unlock greater value
out of it, as we reported earlier.
This
is a familiar theme to us at Dovetail. To every one of our customers
we’ve shown dramatic cost savings by replacing Amdocs Clarify
applications with our Dovetail CRM. At the
same time, our thin client system extends the Clarify database in a
multitude of ways that weren’t possible before, even with Amdocs new
thin client – Dovetail outperforms it by large margins. Our APIs and
Web Services afford much extensibility and integration throughout the
enterprise.
We often notice that best practices throughout the software and CRM
industries mirror the way we’ve always operated, and we strive to
maintain that standard. It’s very important to our customers to get
maximum enhancement with minimum disruption, extending the life of the
legacy Clarify database, and restoring the potential for a future
development path.
“Systems life span has a big impact on IT costs. If
you run systems for longer, you can reduce the annualized cost of
replacement. If you keep systems in good condition, you can reduce the
costs associated with gradual decline. Business cost savings are even
larger. Developing and implementing new systems is hugely disruptive.
Extending the period between new systems from, say, seven years to ten,
can be hugely beneficial. It is possible to manage your IT so that
systems last forever, or at least to extend their life to maximize the
return on your investment.” From How long should IT systems last?
Restoring the future to our customers is
perhaps the most gratifying thing we do with Dovetail products. Our
customer case studies don’t end with the successful install, many of
them continue with details of subsequent innovations that IT has
performed in-house. Dovetail products embrace open standards and an
architecture that exposes practically all of the CRM
business processes. So not only does Dovetail product – built for
identical look and feel – usually slip into the existing Clarify
install seamlessly, but also Dovetail is designed for rapid scaling,
one of the key elements of business agility.
“In the end,
successful scaling can mean successful cost management. By acquiring
only the infrastructure that is actually needed, when it is needed,
costs can be reduced so that—eventually—the enterprise can enjoy the
benefits of economies of scale. In other words, when traffic and
revenue increase by a factor of 10, perhaps the cost of the
infrastructure will increase by only a factor of five.” From How to Scale IT Infrastructure Without Leaving Stretch Marks
The
process of upgrading or even simply maintaining any computing system
enterprise-wide is one that requires technical and managerial skill.
Beyond these elements, a great deal of serious planning and careful
consideration is required, and these things come better in some
companies than in others. Every organization nowadays is concerned
about its business agility, and much more than simply software goes
into the recipe. For most companies, the hardest part is the culture of
collaboration, and being certain that all necessary input is entering
into the planning process. More on this to come.
