- How to ensure that your ERP investments result in a solution that grows and evolves along with your business requirements?
In other words, how can you ensure that the time, energy, and financial resources that you invest not only meet today’s needs but also those of tomorrow?
The best companies today share one trait in common: The ability to subtly, or in many cases drastically, adjust their business models, products, or service offerings based on shifts in customer preferences. Those who are the most nimble are the most successful.
A recent Google search on the term “Oracle Development Services” retrieves all the expected returns. Oracle Corporation provides volumes of information on development strategies, methodologies, and programing languages. If you look closely enough you will also discover links to IT consulting companies and their corresponding service offerings. This is all great content, but how do you leverage these resources to guarantee your project’s success?
Here at ITC we’ve invested a lot of time thinking about what differentiates a team or company when it comes to Oracle Applications development. We have found that our development services practice is distinguished by the ability to focus on and deliver three basic principles in a fashion that can be repeated efficiently for different types of clients, requirements, industries, and cultures.
Time and experience has taught us that successful ERP development boils down to 3 core elements; these 3 elements sit at the foundation of every engagement we are involved in.
- ERP Development Pillar Number I: "Focus"
- ERP Development Pillar Number II: "Communicate"
- ERP Development Pillar Number III: "Build a Knowledge Base"
"Focus" - When you try to do too many things well, you risk becoming average at all of them. At IT Convergence we’ve committed ourselves to avoiding that very trap.
First, this is reflected in our corporate vision as a solution provider. IT Convergence ONLY focuses on Oracle’s suite of products and solutions. Second, we extend this line of thinking to how we operate as a development services partner. Before you can develop code efficiently you must have a basic knowledge of the corresponding Oracle table structures. Everyone knows that.
However, at ITC we take things to another level, and insist that our developers also understand the various modules and the functional business processes they support. We haven’t found an accomplished automobile designer yet who had never set foot in an automobile, and we think the same holds true for Oracle Development. That may seem like common sense, yet we’ve all experienced examples where a program or application was clearly designed by someone who had no concept of the true needs of the end user.
"Communicate" - Let’s face it. “Communication” is one of the most overused terms in the business world today. You would think that for as much as everyone talks about it, “Communication” wouldn’t show up on the top list of project challenges nearly as often as it does.
But of course it does, and it especially comes up when you’re talking about ERP development projects.
The fact is that when it comes to development success, communication remains the single most critical factor.
At IT Convergence we have broken the concept of communication down in to three key aspects that we believe help our development teams succeed.
1. Understanding – Do you understand the business requirements in full? Can you document them in a way that clearly establishes this understanding with real world examples?
2. Analysis – Have you reviewed the options available to solve these requirements completely with an expert? Do the stakeholders fully understand what is possible and what risks and rewards are tied to each option?
3. Accountability – Our development leads are trained to make sure that they are providing more than just a “working” program, application, or report. We strive to provide the best solution available, and the definition of what best truly means is something that we determine and agree to with the business community through the first two pillars of how we communicate (immediately above).
"Build a Knowledge Base" – Since 1998 IT Convergence has been delivering Oracle projects around the world. Many of our original team members across the various development services centers remain with us today.
In 2011 we realized this put us into a unique position. You see, off the record, most seasoned developers will quietly admit that true “code reuse” is a convenient myth courtesy of our friends in the sales department. What we realized in 2011, is that we can transform that myth into reality.
We embarked on an initiative to inventory the objects and solutions that we have built for our clients over the years. At ITC we believe that our library of custom Oracle components gives us a strategic advantage whenever we analyze new requirements. Reinventing the wheel when we have a perfectly good warehouse of them available to us is not something we are interested in.
Our three key areas of focus don’t get nearly the amount of attention on the web or in the executive suite as some other more common buzz words; but here at IT Convergence we know they are important, and we’ve invested a lot of time cultivating what they mean and how they apply to a day in the life of an IT Convergence developer.
If you’ve read this far you’re obviously interested in ERP development and if you’re ready to take a deeper dive, check out our Development Services offerings, fill out our Contact Us form , or feel free to reach out to me directly at apepper@itconvergence.com.
Sincerely,
Adam Pepper
Director of Global Development Services at IT Convergence
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