The productivity gains and cost savings promised by e-business solutions are often lost not because of the technology itself but because of improper management of their implementation. In most of the cases, when a massive e-business solution installation goes wrong, the management of the business is to blame. Failure to understand the scale of the project, oversimplification of the project, inappropriate expectations and lack of resource commitment are few of the mistakes made by management that debilitate the implementation and use of the systems.

Pitfalls of E-business solutions installation process

A large distribution company has decided to use a new online supply chain management solution. The people – those who were supposed to use the system – were quite sceptic about the ability of the system, as they did not have enough knowledge and had very little or no training in using a similar system. As a result, it took over a year for the company to bring the solution to its full operation. Productivity suffered severely.

The final implementation cost came out to be several times more than initial budget. A large number of companies are reporting to face similar difficulties with the implementation of their e-business solutions.

The problems that occur while a com

pany tries to implement e-business solutions, most likely, include:

Senior managers do not spend enough time and efforts to learn and understand the solutions. As a result, they have no idea how their workers will adapt to this new solution; and fail to set forth quantifiable objectives for them in terms of efficiency and productivity. The end users do not receive required training. As a result, treat the new solution as an added burden rather than a tool to increase efficiency and productivity. In many cases, IT infrastructure is not up-to-date enough and lacks power to support the new solution.

Due to inadequate understanding by the management of the e-business solutions that they plan to adopt, often, the time and money allocated to the project are far less than required. Often the advanced Internet based e-business solutions require to be integrated with portion of old systems that the company is presently using, which in turn, sometimes generates software and system incompatibility.

But we would come to that later. First and foremost, we have to understand the rising significance of clear and distinct channels of communication for the proper functioning of any business establishment. There has to be a free flow of information; both within the organizational structure as well as outside. Colleagues within a particular corporate establishment should be able to communicate freely within their organization.

Moreover, the organization as a whole should be able to have an uninterrupted channel of communication to connect with partners, suppliers or branch offices, which could be located almost anywhere in the globe. Moreover, a degree of cost efficiency is very much desirable in these channels.

The latest corporate business solutions, powered by VoIP, can do all these and quite a bit more.