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Integration: How can Fivesite increase your revenue while cutting your costs?

posted by: Alex  /  15 September 2008

So much has been written about integration, but the fact is most organisations have a real mixture of legacy systems, packaged solutions and so on. Can the cost and effort involved integrating disparate systems really boost the bottom line?

The short answer is yes. The three major areas for cutting costs/improving performance are:

• Operational – at its most basic, this means a drastic reduction in re-keying the same information, elimination of ‘islands of information’, cutting down on transcription errors and so on. This ‘mechanical’ aspect of integration alone can fully cost-justify the project and the effort involved. Integration really comes into its own when you are ready to scale up, operations – growing the business. Instead of costs increasing exponentially, they diminish with growth.
  
  

• Trading - Integration of back office systems and web-based solutions opens up a whole new world of trading opportunities, from affiliate marketing to electronic fulfilment. Extending the supply chain electronically creates new opportunities for ‘straight through processing’, where the end customer drives the transaction, carefully guided by your system workflow engine.
  
  

• Business agility – the most significant benefit of strongly integrated systems comes from the business agility that is unleashed. Change as the marketplace changes – or if you are a real pioneer, change the way the marketplace functions.

Real Life Integration Case Study number 1

We are working with a company based in America, Canada and Latin America. They are the largest suppliers of Audio Visual equipment in those regions and sell only through dealers (interestingly, they had searched world-wide to find a company that was on the same wavelength and could demonstrate the skills they required).

Fivesite has integrated their website into existing Navision back office accounting systems as the starting point. Now, when dealers login securely into the website they can see their pricing, their invoices, their order history and their statements without any need to pick up the phone.

Dealers are able to place orders electronically, each passed seamlessly into the back office accounting system. This level of integration has led to a dramatic reduction in SOP costs and allows staff to focus on the front-end of the business, rather than being tied up with mundane data entry and enquiries.

The next step in integration has been a Configurator, which allows our client quickly and easily to create web pages in the style of their many dealer websites.

These pages are then embedded into all the dealers’ own sites. The clever bit being that pages display all the products our client sells, with pricing, specification and pictures. Being a ‘live’ link, each time our client changes products, pricing or specifications in their back office system - all dealer sites are updated automatically.

Just imagine the logistical nightmare this could pose in a normal situation, with 400 dealers and 5000 plus product lines requiring monthly changes.

Furthermore, when customers place orders on dealer websites, the orders pass directly into our client’s accounting system and they dispatch under ‘a white label’ or under the dealer’s own branded paperwork, printed out automatically at point of dispatch.

Now that’s integration!

If you are unsure how your business could benefit, call us for a free consultation - contact us now.

Real Life Integration Case Study number 2

A second example is the UK's largest CNC machine supplier. We have integrated their website into back office accounting systems, with all the benefits we have already described.

The twist, however, is that we have added an additional and significant revenue stream to the business in the form of an intelligent spare parts portal.

Clients who require parts can now simply login into the system. They are shown a list of all the CNC machines they own and the system will inform them if the machine is in or out of warranty and whether a maintenance contract is in place.

In the absence of a maintenance contract, one is offered at discounted rate – tying the end customer into an ongoing relationship.

Importantly, the system will only offer spares that are appropriate to the specific machine (two apparently ‘identical’ machines may have slightly different parts).

The order is then placed electronically and then passed seamlessly into the back office accounting system.

Fivesite has used social media to educate clients on how the system works. An early example can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF4qanCYfNE

Real Life Integration Case Study number 3

Finally, we have been developing with Europe's largest IT distributor a system that combines the key features we have already described, and more. Check it out at www.hotlamps.com.

The project has been so successful we have been asked to roll the systems out throughout Europe in numerous languages (by the time you read this, it may well be complete) and we are also currently working on other product versions, such as Screen Expert.

To find out more contact us on 01234 292222.