Newsletter 106

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Number 106

Welcome to the November 2011 issue of Precision Matters - the Precision Design Technology (PDT) Newsletter.

An Unexpected Time Away From My Desk

This last week has been a little irregular with a most unusual stay at our local hospital. I won’t mention the symptoms with children in the room, but my visit to A&E resulted in being admitted for a few days.

While there I observed another patient trying to leave after his inpatient treatment.

He needed to be cleared by Physiotherapy and a Doctor. Being a Sunday, the Doctor was on call, meaning anywhere in the Hospital. So a call was put out and everyone waited.

Eventually, the duty Doctor showed up and declared the patient able to leave. But this action did not resolve the drug situation, though the patient had no requirement from this visit.

It took quite some time for this to resolve, the whole discharge process covering several hours.

Incidentally, the car park fees depend upon your stay.

Which introduces my topic for this month.

A Stitch In Time...

Many companies have grown like Topsy.
Organic is the modern word for this type of growth, where new processes have been added to meet the immediate needs of the growing business.

Businesses that have grown organically do very well, I don't dispute this, but could perhaps do better if support systems are better tailored to the present and planned needs of the business. These systems should be pro-active instead of reactive to the changing business need.

Growth may slow down in you business, but will never stop.

So it is important to take time every year or so to review your business processes, either internally or using external skills, to ensure they are relevant and necessary both now and in relation to your strategic plan.

You will get a view of processes which might not be performing well. Here must lie our Hospital Discharge process; it is correct and achieves its goal, but so slowly and it is possibly ripe for automation.

You will see the extent of IT support for your business, and thus where there may be opportunity to introduce business-led IT support from which your business will really gain benefit.

Ensure the review takes account of data as well as function. This will enable you to identify possible duplications and redundancies. Places where data is no longer being used, for example. Or where the same data is being collected in two different processes and possibly duplicated.

You will also see limitations in your reporting capabilities; places where the data for new reports does not exist.

Very swiftly, you will regain control of your business because you will know how the processes provide you with the functional and reporting data you require.

Clarity of your current position gives you long sight for the future.

And about that stitch in time, why it will repay many times if you match IT support to your business.

Want to reproduce this article?

Yes you can, so long as you accredit it to Robin Oldman, Precision Design Technology Ltd. and attach the following biography to the article at the bottom:

Precision Design Technology, (PDT), the IT systems experts, provides world-class consultancy and solutions for IT information systems to help its customers develop affordable, high integrity software for business. Normally high-integrity software is prohibitively expensive - PDT provides a solution at a price business can afford.

EUR ING Robin Oldman, COO at PDT, writes and blogs on behalf of the company. Robin also manages the development of the user interface for the SPECIFY4IT tool-set that bridges the gap between the client user and the system supplier. The SPECIFY4IT tool-set is capable of delivering high-integrity business software faster and more cheaply than conventional development methods.