The buzzword in IT for sometime now has been fully integrated systems and more recently the ERPs. Meaning that all the systems read basically from the same database – that once data has been posted in to the system, that information is available to all modules and users who might need it.
For example, a cash sale by salesman, once captured at the point of sales, updates your cash balance, turnover figures, stocks and payroll data with the sales-man commission etc. It also means that, where your organisation is involved in different business lines, any common information for the various lines of business, needs only be captured once into the system. And that all this information is available to the financial module and can be summarised at a click of a button without user intervention into financial reports – profit and loss statement and a balance sheet.
To what extent have various organisations achieved this?
In my view, this ideal situation is more easily achievable for trading enterprises particularly where the organisation is dealing in fairly similar products.
However, my experience in the service industry has been that this ideal situation has been quite elusive.
The major stumbling block to my mind has been the tendency of most solution providers to start by trying to meet the most complicated and involving demands of the users and then trying to work their way towards achieving the basics.
This is like climbing the legendary tree from the top. A more logical way of doing it and for which I believe the technology now exists is to start by achieving the basics and building in the complication of the industry as you go along.
The systems I have in mind here are all necessarily financial, where the end and most important report are the performance reports of the institution in financial terms.
A computerisation project to my mind should therefore start with meeting the basics of financial reporting i.e. a Profit & Loss Account and a Balance Sheet. It should concern itself with processing the data of each line of these financial statements before proceeding to other enhancements, utilities and aesthetic qualities.
My experience on the contrary has been that solution providers are so keen on showing you how the system will be able to auto generate standard letters to the client or other such superficial issues, they forget to address the basics. So that at the end of it, the user has to export data to excel for example just to work out the turnover for the current month and then after that post a manual journal in order to capture the information for financial reporting purposes.
Taking an example from an organisation I know, the noble desire to computerise has led to situations where fairly complicated documentation and reports are now available from the system but where the accuracy and understandability of some basic reports for example debtors and creditors statements and aged summaries, period transactions listings, period income or turnover reports etc have been greatly compromised. The organisation has resulted to managing their payables using excel spreadsheets and they have to rework their income and turnover for each reporting period manually. And now they are too far-gone in the implementation to ditch the project.
The situation has further been worsened by the existence of foreign share-holders from more ‘advanced’ countries who believe they have the ultimate solution from their countries to solve our IT needs. And the locals suffering from inferiority complex of sorts unquestioningly accept their wisdom. . . .Recipe for disaster!
