Make the most of your IT and e-commerce

Make the most of your IT and e-commerce

To make the most of your IT and e-commerce investment, there are several points you need to observe:

• Focus on the business benefits, not the technology - you may want to make your finance team more productive by eliminating repetitive processes. All you need to know about the hardware and software is that it will achieve this - its technical specification isn't important.
• Only approve projects when you're confident that they support your business objectives - if you're looking to get products to market faster it's worth investing in supply-chain management software. But if your customers prefer longer lead times, there's little benefit to making the investment.
• Plan to achieve measurable improvements - eg if you start an online shop, it's a good idea to set sales targets and monitor their effectiveness.
• Don't leave the planning to your suppliers or consultants - only you know what your business really needs from IT. Suppliers and consultants may have their own interests in mind - they may suggest you spend more than you need to achieve your goals.
• Recognise that there is also a requirement to provide ongoing support to your staff to ensure that problems are quickly resolved and system performance issues addressed.
• Get your budgeting right - including future expenditure or maintenance, replacement and upgrading. If you have made provision for your IT systems, you won't be looking around for cash when you need to boost your system or take advantage of new technologies.
• Review projects regularly to ensure that the planned benefits are being realised - eg if your finance team are still carrying out repetitive tasks your IT upgrade should have eliminated, you'll be paying twice, once for the IT and again for the staff costs it was supposed to have replaced.