There is a dramatic difference between companies of the early 20th century and contemporary enterprises. The latter need to be multifunctional, flexible and efficient. Digital technologies and sophisticated software ensure speed and accuracy of all business processes including analysis and control, customer support system and general management.
Companies from different industries, be it either a jewelry shop or an oil rig, have the same business processes and face common challenges. The key ingredient of business success is to identify a weakness in the chain of value production and to choose a soft or an application most appropriate for eliminating it. If you are contemplating about business optimization, here comes an instruction for you.
Step 1. Decompose the problem
How could you eat a huge elephant? Of course, you would cut it into small pieces. If you would like to increase sales of snow during a winter, (No jokes, this is a real business case from Israel: a company which supplied snow for winter Olympic games) just divide your project into simple transparent constituents and improve them one by one!
Step 2. Make a process
You need to identify the sequence of processes forming a base of your business. A lack or a delay of any of them leads to a serious decrease of efficiency for the whole company. A thorough analysis and a little bit of patience will assist in finding a problem and eventually solving it.
Step 3. Provide a shared online-space for the whole company
It is crucial today to create a constant online-communication between all employees, departments and branches of the company; both data bases and work information have to be valid and relevant. The information-load per one employee has increased significantly in the last twenty five years. Use cutting edge software and technologies to maintain productivity and an ability to prioritize and analyze the information input.
Step 4. Choose a proper software
So, you decomposed your business and identified the particular weaknesses. It is time for choosing and implementing new technologies! Do you need to evaluate your web-site, digital campaign or social media? Use Google Social Mention, Cyfe or Rankur. Do you have problems with customer service via telephone? Cogito Corporation and CallMiner may help you. Does your company have low quality of general and project management? Don’t be scared! Well-known Trello, Wrike, the 2017 winner of gold medal in this sphere, or Asana-app, integrating with WordPress, Google, Dropbox, MailChimp, Slack etc., will solve such problems. Less widespread options are Smartsheet, an app with interactive project and team management, crowdsourcing and sales analytics, Quire, PushMonand at least ten other quite useful programs.
Step 5. Look at advanced intelligent system around your segment
If you run a business in complicated markets, such as in the heavy or automotive industry, you need not only traditional project management tools, but also intelligent navigation technology, which provide a useful instrument for business optimization, monitoring and control a lot of people and objects, working within one big space.
NB! Success story of one car manufacturer, whose careach of us has drivenat least once
The world’s biggest car manufacturers operate not only in developed European markets, but also in developing countries, where providing a proper quality of client service and maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction is complicated.
A car repair service center (CRSC), operating in a developing country, decided to optimized all business-processes in 2016. The total area of this CRSC is 5000 sq.m. with 200 parking slots and 10 working zones. After a thorough analysis managers identified some key problems: incoming cars were not properly registered, were sent to wrong parking slots and working zones, sometimes even lost while transporting, employees did not clearly understand, what was going on and with what car they should work in a particular period of time. More simply, this CRSC didn’t run like clockwork, lacked monitoring, control and common information systems.
The most relevant and efficient solution was offered by Navigine, which had been established as an indoor tracking system solution provider, but eventually developed into a multifunctional enterprise with a wide range of intelligent products. Navigine created a unique platform tracking all incoming cars in real time and controlling all operations with cars inside the repair service center.
Features and results
Navigine’s solution includes 33 IoT gateways deployed to track up to 150 branded BLE tags and ensures a real-time car location tracking on a floor plan, stores records of movement for all cars and alerts management about expiring service terms and anomalies. When a new car comes to CRSC, it is tagged by BLE mark and is tracked in all working zones or parking slots. This intelligent system automatically calculates time spent in a particular location and notifies workers and managers, if an object remains in one position too long. Moreover, this software provides detailed reports by cars, time, zones and events.
A new tool solved the problem of control and assisted in monitoring and evaluation of work of the whole CRSC, identified the weaknesses and opened an opportunity for business optimization. The time spent on standard operations was reduced by up to 30%, and 6-fold on car transportation (from 20 min to 3). The shared working interface ensured a chance to forecast and plan daily work load. The revenue increased due to optimizing costs on components, spare parts and consumables.
A little bit of a summary
The competitive advantage of modern hi-tech products is their multifunctionality and applicability in different markets. For example, Navigine creates individual systems not only for smart parking and car repair centers, but also for retail, logistic and storage, real estate, advertising and medicine. Real-time tracking and BLE-tags allow all these industries reduce costs and save billions of dollars.
