The first step we took was internal brainstorming and internal workshops that resulted in a strategic plan and then an operational one for each profit centre.
We also needed to strengthen the managerial team and reorganize our administration departments. During the scanning phase, we figured out that we had more than 500 activities and 74 business processes.
After we optimized our internal business processes, the managerial reporting was set and our reports were finally comprehensive and in line with IBCS standards. These processes, roles, reports, and other administrative matters were a scheme of what this internal software should be doing. The aim of this internal app should be that it should cover all our internal processes. And our developers started to work on it.
The internal development team used RAD platform as the basis. They presented it to the management and explained that a lot of features can be ready for work within few weeks. Within just a few weeks we already had a bunch of core applications: Admin, User Management, Organization Management, Document Management, Notification Management, and even the main business application: Timesheet.
Well, everything you need for good and fast application development is organization of the development, team management. Thanks to this comprehensive approach, within two months from the start of the project, we had fully operative Timesheet, Project Management and Offers Management features. We are currently working on the next two: Human Resources Management and Decision Management features.
Even though we have more features to develop that will be fully customized, so far, we see a significant improvement in data integration, faster information flow, better internal communication, and cooperation between departments.
Furthermore, we now have a faster and better decision-making process because we can always check which business issues are open. This could all have been achieved with many different applications for each business division, but it would probably have taken an additional year. In other words, this means that we did not just save time – we also saved money that would otherwise have gone on different applications, which would not have been fully tailored to our business requirements.
This project has also had a significant impact on our culture. Our developers told us that while working on this project they embraced knowledge sharing and were able to complement each other with different set of skills. They learned new things from each other and got familiar with new technologies. This provided a solid knowledge base for upcoming customers’ projects.
