Assessment The first step in evaluating the status of a business is the primary assessment called the Business & Technology Check-up. The main areas of assessment are: Operations and Back Office Business Processes Business information systems Back Office organization Information Technology team - internal & external Hardware and Network Infrastructure
Operations and Back Office Business Processes This is the primary focus of the Bus & Tech Health Check as it focuses on the business to uncover inefficient processes. Back Office Business Processes also known as the Financial Supply Chain consists of all the departments and processes required to record the transactions of the business through to the financial reporting. This includes Purchase process, Accounts Payable, Sales process, Accounts Receivable, Treasury, Month-end close, and Capital Assets. Operations addresses the departments and processes to deliver the goods/services that the company sells. Questions we address are: What are spreadsheets used for and where? Where are all the manual data entry points? Who utilizes the corporate accounting (ERP) and other systems? Where are duplicate data entry points? Is there integration with suppliers or customers? How quickly are business transactions completed? How timely & accurate is the information available to executives and decision makers What information is available for executives and decision makers
Business Information Systems The business information systems are important to determine the technology available to automate the business processes. Questions we address are: - What are the systems that are used, are they in-house developed or purchased software. If purchased software, when were they last upgraded?
- How do the systems integrate?
- What functionality is used in each of the systems especially ERP and CRM?
- How many different ERP, CRM, document management systems are used in the company
- What new systems or upgrades are currently planned or in processes
Back Office Organization How the departments are ogranized and how many locations are important to determine the efficiency of the organizations. We also look at the communication and integration between back office departments and operations departments and between the company and its vendors and customers. Information Technology Team
The next component of the Assessement is a review of the current technology team including in-house personnel and outsource companies or consultants. The areas we evaluate are: - Skill sets of existing in-house personnel and consultants
- Skill sets/positions that need to be added to the existing team
- Areas that may be outsourced
- Review of current outsource providers and contracts
Hardware and Network Infrastructure
This is an optional part of the Assessment. If the company has an internal infrastructure team or an outsourced team that maintains this area, we do not address it. If not then, in this part of the assessment, we evaluate the current servers, workstations and networking hardware. In the evaluation of the servers and workstations we look at the age of the hardware, security, processing capacity, usage and throughput. We will provide recommendations of upgrading/replacement, server consolidation, server location, server and workstation security. The Results of the Assessment is a completed report including: - Overview of the key processes that are inefficient and recommendations for methods to improve productivity
- Overview of the key systems used in the business and recommendations for additional or upgraded systems
- Analysis of the Finance & Operations organization and recommendations for revised organization
- Review of the Information Technology team and recommendations for insource/outsource functions, skill sets needed in the IT department
- Analysis of the technology infrastructure and recommendations on modifications that can be made to reduce cost and improve throughput
- Timeframe and order for implementation of recommendations
- High level estimate of ROI for the recommended changes.
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