Terry’s Take

In today’s economy we are all struggling to find ways to do more with less or to get more out of investments we have already made.  I have seen our client base demonstrate creativity and business acumen time and time again in leveraging their SAP implementations to enhance business processes, reduce costly mistakes, provide better decision-making criteria or improve customer service.  However there is no doubt in my mind that each of our customers has more hidden gems to be found.

I will be revisiting this topic in the future to share ideas with you on how to get more out of your software investment.  I hope to include anecdotes from my colleagues and our clients that I hope will inspire you to look more closely at your own implementations for some wins.  I will be talking about a number of topics including improving current processes, SAP features like the approval/alert process and components you can add to your SAP system that will provide added functionality.

Today, let’s look at where to start.  You have implemented your SAP software for a reason or are about to.  You had goals or objectives that you wanted to see achieved.  Maybe one of your goals was better inventory management such as reducing stock-outs or improved turnover.  Maybe you wanted improved A/R collections, reduced cost of processing sales orders, better contract management or timely reporting.  It is important that when you now look for improvements you understand what was already supposed to be achieved.  The process of benchmarking these areas or setting clear objectives is something we can help with.  Look at these objectives first and then look at where your current pains are.  Are staff concerned about too many manual steps in a process?  Are there too many errors on customer orders?  Does your sales analysis information tell you what you need to do to be better?

Maybe your organization is changing?  You are experiencing growth, product/service diversification or other factors that mean your system needs to keep up with these changes.  Change creates stress for both people and systems.  You not only want to get more out of your investment, you also need to safeguard the investment that you have already made.  Does everyone have the proper level of training and are processes documented?  Proper backups, network security and your hardware environment are some elements worth reviewing from time to time.  Lastly, look at where new improvements can really help take your organization to the next level.  Your SAP system can be an enabler to assist you and your team to achieve even more.

At Coastal Range, we have helped many clients get more out of their systems.  We do more than solve day-to-day problems.  I encourage you to talk to your Coastal Range representative and start with a review of your current state.  Some of our clients have shopping lists of improvements they want to make to their systems.  Prioritizing these lists can only be done by you but we can provide input to help develop business cases, justification or estimates.  Sometimes a simple change to a business process can result in cost savings or improved customer service.  Technology isn’t always the answer but in many cases it can be part of our ongoing struggle to do more with less.