COA Solutions – Business Accounting Software

Just like information technology (IT), human resources (HR) serve the business; just like IT, HR is not taken seriously enough by the business.

Put simply, enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the building blocks for your business – a system that integrates technology operations in a single environment.

Since the early 1990s, organisations have used ERP to control key activities, such as sales, billing and resource management. Organisations, both small and large, still use and rely on ERP.

Banks returning to profit and rising house prices can be seen as significant signs of a possible economic upturn.

However, now is not the time for complacency; positive signs are no excuse for a lack of attention to detail. Businesses that take time to heave a huge sigh of relief will see fast-moving rivals quickly pass their organisation.

Alignment – between the projects of the IT department and the demands of the business – is one of the most talked about technology objectives.

The reason is clear. With limited cash to spend on new IT, CIOs must prove to the business that technology can provide a quick return on investment.

From electronic data interchange (EDI) to customer relationship management (CRM), IT directors were keen to talk up the importance of their latest three-letter acronym-based project. Top of these initiatives came enterprise resource planning (ERP), an all-encompassing approach to resource management.

Yesterday I read the MacLeod review on employee engagement, ‘Engaging for Success’ . It bought to mind my experience as a Sunday footballer. Much of the time I played in teams who were at the bottom or close to the bottom of the league. Getting out of bed on a Sunday morning was miserable. The pitches were always too wet or too hard. The knocks always hurt. And what has this got to do with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke’s report? Well, it reminded me that when I played in a team that did very well, funnily enough getting out of bed was easy, the pitches were great and it was easy to shrug off bumps and bruises. Under all the criteria of engagement I would say that I was much more engaged when we were winning.

One area of business intelligence that is getting more and more attention is decision making. We are capable of processing huge amounts of data now with very sophisticated software, but as we have seen in the Financial Sector, the most sophisticated user of information, there can still be cataclysmic repercussions.

One of the questions that always goes through my mind when I am on a plane waiting for take off is, ‘Am I safer because there is a pilot flying this machine or would I be safer without him?’. This was brought home to me with the media discussion on the crash of the Air France Airbus 330.

I’ve just started reading ‘The Snowball’ the biography of Warren Buffett, ‘Oracle of Omaha’, written by Alice Schroeder. It’s difficult not to warm to a man who has such a down to earth approach to business and life. Who has an overwhelming desire to keep proving himself and who has a deep reverence for his father whom he felt the world had treated unjustly.

COA Solutions was very well represented last Thursday 30th October at the Sift Media Business Software Satisfaction Awards 2008 at the Brewery in London.