Make Your LOB Systems Work Harder for Your Organisation

In our experience, there are business processes that are common to most organisations, that need to be handled in a unique way due to that company’s business model or infrastructure. For example  – new employee on-boarding, all companies have to do this but the tasks involved are specific to their company set up.

Processes like these often involve more than one LOB system. These systems each do their job well, they may do some things incredibly well, but often cannot do everything that is required by an organisation. They can be heavily customised to align with a company’s individual needs but this can lead to key knowledge of that system being held by a limited number of staff, resulting in a lack of flexibility, high maintenance, risk and support. Over a period of time, the systems plugging the gaps between existing LOB solutions grow bigger than the main system, and this can result in a lack of flexibility, high maintenance, increased risk and difficult support.

An Example – Modifying CRM to Handle HR Data

As part of a broader initiative to adopt a new HR system for employee records management, PointBeyond were engaged to perform an analysis of an organisation’s HR processes, such as their recruitment process.

We found that Microsoft Dynamics CRM had been modified by our client to fulfil the needs of employee records management and records related to recruitment. Clearly this is a marked departure from CRM’s core functionality, nonetheless it had been possible to accommodate enhancement requests which initially may have been minor in scope, but over a period of years had led to a complex system with side databases, bespoke user interfaces and several “bolt on” applications built in house. The end result was that over a period of time, what started as a side system has grown to become bigger than the main system.

Problems with this solution were:

  • Customisations could only be modified by a few individuals with “key knowledge”
  • Data was getting duplicated due to the heterogeneous nature of the process
  • Searching for information using was getting increasingly difficult for end-users
  • The system became challenging to maintain and support
  • Extensive and expensive code rewrites were required each time a new version appeared – resulting in additional testing, integration testing, unit testing etc

The organisation had around 250 employees, but operated in the Financial Services sector, and of paramount strategic importance was the ability to select the best employee candidates at the right time, in a fiercely competitive global market. Due to their size, this type of company had been overlooked by the traditional HR system vendors, who cannot effectively tailor their services to support the needs of small to medium enterprises.

Business Solution Strategy – Develop a Process Layer

PointBeyond completed a gap analysis and formulated a HR systems strategy roadmap, some interesting observations were made, which can apply to many organisations.

  • Develop a business solution strategy that minimises customisations of Line of Business Systems.
  • Recognise that an additional layer (a process layer) is needed in your Information Architecture which identifies the human to human, and human to system interactions linking your LOB systems and information workers. If you don’t think you need one, understand that this layer already exists, and is producing results whether you are aware or not!!
  • Use Line of Business Systems for their core functionality – it is what they are good at. No point building a wheel from scratch, let alone reinventing one, if a good example is available off the shelf.
  • Monitor and develop this process layer continually and make the LOBs work harder for you!

Orchestrate your Systems with Process Management tools

To get the best performance from your systems, align them to your Business processes and use each system for their recognised strengths. Do not fall into the trap of trying to customise a system too far beyond it’s designed purpose. For example Microsoft Dynamics is excellent as a customer relationship management platform, but do not try to modify it to run your month end accounts!

To use a simple analogy, an orchestra conductor is able to get the best sound out of an orchestra by calling each musician to play to their strengths and only when needed. In a similar manner, a process management solution can be used to call upon your various systems as and when needed by using service calls. Ideally suited to this task in a SharePoint environment are workflow and process management tools from K2 and Nintex.

By using process management and workflow tools you can effectively provide scalable end to end solutions for your Business that can adapt quickly and easily to changing Business requirements.

Back to the PointBeyond website

SharePoint 2013 Migration: Your 5 Rules for Success – Webinar

Lots of interest and great attendance in our SharePoint 2013 webinar this afternoon with Christian Buckley. The presentation was titled “SharePoint 2013 Migration: Your 5 Rules for Success”.

The 5 rules from Christian are

  1. Define your business priorities
  2. Rebuild your taxonomy
  3. Map to your information architecture
  4. Establish clear and simple governance guidelines
  5. Implement transparent change management

The slides from the session can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/echo4sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-migration-your-5-rules-for-success

More information on migrating to SharePoint 2013 can be found on our microsite at http://www.sharepoint2013upgrade.co.uk

Should I Upgrade to SharePoint 2013?

It’s a question that we get asked a lot. And it’s an important question to get right, because an upgrade is going to cost time, money, and have a significant impact on the way people work.

Bad arguments for upgrading are surprisingly pervasive. Here are some that we have come across:

  • It’s new and it does more, so it must be better for us
  • Our current SharePoint site doesn’t work too well, so upgrading will hopefully fix things
  • Our IT department likes to work with the latest technology because it is cool
  • More people will use it if we upgrade
  • It will look good on my CV

So how should you objectively go about deciding whether or not an upgrade is the right thing to do? The answer is by defining clear business objectives, identifying precisely how an upgrade to SharePoint 2013 will meet those objectives, and what the benefit will be. For example:

Objective: Senior managers to be able to access company information on their iPads

How met: SharePoint 2013 supports access from iPads

Benefit: We will no longer need to custom code an access portal for managers, saving £35k and simplifying ongoing maintenance

Objective: We want to integrate applications written in Java with SharePoint

How met: The improved client side object model and the 2013 app model

Benefit: The integration will save an estimated 50 man-hours per week and can be delivered in 30 days of development effort, as opposed to an alternative approach which is 90 days of effort

The first step in assessing the benefits of an upgrade is identifying in non-technical terms what business problems you are trying to solve. Then comes the tricky bit, which is assessing how SharePoint 2013, or your current SharePoint version could be used to meet them. Next we need to assess what the cost of an upgrade would be, and from there a justified decision can be made.

The longer term needs to be considered as well. Suppose I have some requirements. There are two options:

  • Option 1: Implement the requirements on the old SharePoint platform
  • Option 2: Upgrade then implement the requirements on SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 may be a better platform for meeting the requirements, and allow them to be delivered more quickly. However the additional cost of the upgrade is a barrier, and people decide to make do with what they have got. Whilst in the short term this may save money, it may end up costing more in the long term. Over time, new requirements come along, and the organisation continues to deliver them on the old platform. Eventually there may (depending on the nature of the requirements) come a point where the cost of implementation on the old platform has exceeded the cost of upgrade plus implementation on SharePoint 2013. This is a bad place to be. You still have the upgrade to do, and you now have more customisations and more content, which makes the upgrade more complex than it would have been if you had tackled it at the outset.

Our approach is always to take an unbiased approach to upgrade decisions, and to help our customers to make the right choices. We do this by combining business experience with in depth SharePoint technical knowledge to provide business justification to back up the decision.

PointBeyond is offering a fixed price Upgrade Assessment Package that will answer the critical questions of should I upgrade to SharePoint 2013, what are the benefits, how should I do it, and what should it cost. Contact us to find out more.

SharePoint on Low Bandwidth Connections

Several customers that we have been working recently have been wanting to use SharePoint globally, often with offices in remote parts of the world where internet bandwidth is limited. How well does SharePoint work in these scenarios? What are the options available to someone looking to deploy SharePoint and make it accessible across a low bandwidth WAN or internet connection?

Upgrade to SharePoint 2013

The version of SharePoint in use is a good starting point and may be an easy win. SharePoint 2010 and earlier versions weren’t exactly renowned for being lightweight on bandwidth. This has changed significantly with SharePoint 2013, where optimisations such as the new Minimal Download Strategy can achieve up to a 40% improvement in the use of available bandwidth (Microsoft figures). If you have bandwidth problems or concerns, then an upgrade to 2013 is certainly going to help, and it brings with it the numerous additional benefits of the new version.

Use Latest Format Office Documents

It’s amazing to see how many old style .doc, .xls, and .ppt files are still in use. The new formats: .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx introduced in 2007 are typically around a third of the size of their older counterparts. A bulk conversion is a relatively simple exercise (for example using PowerShell) and it can save gigabytes or terabytes of storage, as well as reducing bandwidth needs when users are uploading or downloading files. A further advantage of these file formats is that when documents are opened from SharePoint and a change is made, only the changes are sent back upon save. With the old formats the entire document is sent back to SharePoint, even if just a single character is changed in a 10Mb document.

Use Office Web Applications

Office Web Applications, an optional component in SharePoint 2010 and 2013, will render Office documents in the browser. This is beneficial for users who are on the road and perhaps using computers that don’t have the right version of Office installed. But additionally, Office Web Applications makes better use of bandwidth. Only the pages that a user goes to are downloaded, and they are downloaded as needed, rather than a long wait at the start while an entire document downloads.

Use WAN Optimisation Technologies

Network devices such as Steelhead from Riverbed or BIG-IP WAN Optimisation Manager from F5 apply sophisticated techniques of caching and compression to reduce network traffic, in some cases very significantly.

Replicate Content

I’m not a great fan of replicating content between SharePoint sites because of its inherent complexity and technical challenge, especially when a two way synchronisation or a global search is needed. A simpler option is to allow users to take offline copies of documents, using SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013 or a third party tool such as Colligo.

 

When thinking how best to address bandwidth issues it’s essential to quantify the problem through measurement and capacity planning, so that you can be sure that the solutions you choose will deliver what is needed.

Back to PointBeyond web site.

Major Project for Government Agency Completes on Time and Under Budget

PointBeyond have completed the first phase of a significant new business solution platform for the Operations team of a major UK Government Agency.  A solution was required to replace the almost entirely manual process of receiving and consolidating data – which had been extremely time consuming for the Operations team and had placed significant constraints on their resources and flexibility.

PointBeyond delivered an Operations engine, a platform that allows the team to set up forms to automate the extensive set of their internal data collection processes. Behind each form, complex workflow and tight integration with back end systems can now be delivered to bring true cross-organization data capture and integration platform. Automated data capture and consolidation greatly increased capacity of Operations team to handle large volumes of data, improving both speed and flexibility.

PointBeyond provided extensive training in the new technology which allowed the Operations team to be self-sufficient in designing and delivering new data capture forms. They can now quickly and easily add new data collection methods themselves, keeping the solution adaptable and scalable.

Benefits of the new Operation engine include:

  • Increased speed and efficiency by replacing manual processes with automated receipt and consolidation of data
  • Time saved by the automatic identification and chasing of missing, incomplete or invalid returns
  • Increased team capacity – team members freed up to concentrate on improving process efficiency
  • Improvement to the access, quality and completeness of data for reporting purposes
  • Support for a variety of data input sources

The key components of the solution were K2 Smartforms and K2 Blackpearl technologies which will be integrated with SharePoint in the next phase of the project. K2 and PointBeyond are partners, and the solution was delivered combining K2’s tools and product knowledge with our business application strategy and experience. When the Operations engine is integrated with SharePoint, the agency will benefit from extra features such as an easy to use front end and powerful dashboard reporting on their data.

Speed up Business Solution Delivery

Are you a business leader who has to wait ages for IT to deliver your business applications?  You are not alone!

A new survey by Forrester Research of 325 business and IT leaders highlights that business leaders find the delivery of strategic IT solutions too slow. The business leaders want innovative IT solutions but custom development can’t deliver them fast enough.

The majority of business leaders surveyed wanted solutions within less than 12 months (51% within less than six months), which was something the IT delivery resources consistently struggled to achieve.

IT placed “keeping things running” as their top priority. Business leaders see this as a priority too.  But in order to stay competitive and move forward, they are demanding solutions quicker than IT can develop them.

PointBeyond recommends a Business Application Strategy to plan how best IT can help organisations meet their business objectives. We regularly work with organisations to help them prioritise their application delivery, identify which solutions will deliver the most value, and understand the most efficient approach to meet their requirements.

Building business applications from scratch using custom code is a slow process. By using SharePoint to integrate systems and building with ‘no code’ tools instead, organisations can rapidly deliver complex business applications to the business at lower cost. The business leaders will be satisfied as they see results quicker and their ROI is improved. Furthermore, no-code SharePoint solutions are scalable, and also can easily and quickly be adapted as the business changes, meaning on-going satisfaction is high, while costs are kept low.

You can read our Business Application Strategy whitepapers here.

Upgrade to SharePoint 2013 with Confidence

Are you eager to explore what Microsoft SharePoint 2013 could deliver for your business but afraid of the time, cost and risk involved in migration? It needn’t be a daunting task.

Take advantage of an ‘Upgrade Readiness Assessment’ from PointBeyond, the UK’s leading SharePoint Business Application Specialists.  It will help you to objectively evaluate the benefits and requirements of migration so you can make an informed and reassured decision.

Gain Deeper Insight

  • Get a better understanding of the SharePoint 2013 features and benefits that will be critical for your business
  • Remove uncertainty around the migration options and paths open to you

Benefit from Bespoke Analysis

  • Receive detailed analysis of your environment and requirements
  • Experience the contribution and impact of industry leading SharePoint migration and analysis software tools

Build Confidence from Expert Guidance

  • Get honest advice on the benefits, overcome hurdles and reduce risk
  • Our proven approach and methodology ensures your upgrade requirements are comprehensively taken care of

Ready, Get Set, Go!       

  • Receive a bespoke Recommendations Report to share with your stakeholders detailing how your organisation can achieve your migration objectives and what the estimated cost will be
  • Save time and money – your comprehensive action plan will help you get started quickly
  • Have confidence that the migration of your business critical systems will follow best practice successfully

View 7 great benefits of SharePoint 2013 here: http://www.sharepoint2013upgrade.co.uk/

 To book an Upgrade Readiness Assessment, or for more information on this offer please contact us. 



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