With a turnover of €25m and 125 employees, technology provider Ergo would comfortably qualify as a small business according to most definitions of the term. The company, which supplies IT products and software solutions, bespoke and out-of-the-box, along with managed services, was founded in 1993 and counts Beaumont Hospital, Bank of Scotland and Glanbia among its clients.
Scalable software development
The provision of remote managed services isn’t unique to Ergo – a number of providers are targeting the small business market with similar offerings – and the arguments in favour are nothing new. With many small businesses not able to afford a dedicated IT professional to monitor and manage their networks, it makes sense for them to consider outsourcing the work to an external expert.
What is interesting in Ergo’s case is the company’s focus on software development for small businesses. As a (relatively) small business, Ergo has a decidedly level-headed approach to technology managing director John Purdy explains. “A lot of technology companies talk about their product being the best, fastest or sexiest – I say ‘so what?’. We’re trying to do something that’s tangible to a customer’s business. We’re driving business change. Let’s not talk about the technology, let’s talk about the business.”
Most small businesses have competitors that are much larger companies and they need to be able to compete with them in the most efficient way they can. If small companies don’t streamline their business processes, they could be at a disadvantage against large competitors.
“To survive, you need to box above your weight,” Purdy argues.
Ergo’s philosophy is to concentrate on the customer’s business processes rather than developing a software solution or trying to shoehorn a product to fit a customer. Traditionally, software development has been considered an expensive luxury for smaller companies and viewed more as the exclusive preserve of large businesses, but Ergo is keen to dispel that preconception.
“We might have a product that can already solve the issue or perhaps 80% of it,” Purdy says. “In that case, we’ll say ‘let’s not reinvent the wheel’. If a product can solve it, let’s use it. But if not let’s build it.”
To this end, Ergo has developed a tool kit around supply chain areas such as sales, delivery, manufacturing and warehousing, which it can use as the basis of its development. “We’ve built them from the ground up and now they can be reused. The tool kit might solve 50 to 70% of the process and we’ll bespoke the last piece to suit your specific requirements.”
Panther’s process improved<br /> Clondalkin-based Panther Products, which specialises in printing pens, cigarette lighters, electronic goods, key rings and conference items for the corporate gift and retail industry, is a good example of an Ergo software development small business customer. After an extensive consulting exercise, Ergo developed an application for the company which covered sales order processing and the ability to trace every step in the production process, including tracking the amount of employee time spent on a job – giving a greater insight into one of the biggest costs to small companies: personnel.
Purdy believes Panther is a good illustration of a small business using technology to improve the business process, deliver a return on investment and allow it to punch above its weight against larger competitors.
Timesheet for the 21st century
Another example is removal firm Cronin’s, which wanted to automate its manual paper-based timesheet system. Ergo developed a secure electronic time management solution with remote access that enabled users to clock in and out of different jobs remotely using fingerprint technology on mobile devices. The information is sent back to a database in the head office, fed into the existing payroll package and used to generate management information reports.
Live updates
When it comes to ‘out-of-the-box’ implementations, Ergo points to commercial and residential lighting LED. Ergo replaced LED’s financial and business package with SAP Business One but it also developed an add-on that enabled LED to use handheld scanning devices to record and process warehouse transactions and provide live updates back to the SAP system. According to Purdy, LED illustrates the importance of being able to “develop add-ons or extensions to existing products for small businesses to fill the gaps in their business processes or to provide a business process their systems don’t already cover”.
With many small businesses having invested in automating parts of their business processes, their requirements can often be very specific. “A normal package won’t cover that easily,” Purdy argues. “And when it comes to customisation, the costs add up. If you do a good solid business analysis and you can match it to the business process and help improve it, you can still bring it in at a cost that’s beneficial to small businesses.”
Ability to relate
He suggests that because Ergo is a small business itself, it is better able to relate to the needs and requirements of small businesses than many larger IT providers and suppliers. “We all have Word on our desktops but we’re only using 30 or 40% of the functionality. In big products, there is a lot of functionality people don’t use. We’re giving people value for money and the functionality they need. We’re not giving them functionality that’s no good to them.”
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers