Types of information systems
The term information system today often conceals both a comprehensive solution for managing the entire company and specialized and narrowly focused systems.
- Types of systems
- Specifics of the company
- Vendor selection
- Price of the system
- Installing the system
Economic or management system?
An economic system is a tool for performing legislative obligations. Its purpose is to use the available data to figure out how a company is getting along in a given period. By contrast, a management system is first and foremost used for managing the company. It can also do accounting, but mostly managing and planning, forecasting, controlling and evaluating company processes, not only in economic administration, but also in production, purchasing, sales, warehouses, and marketing and business.
A box or implemented solution?
Box systems are simple and cheap solutions that are immediately functional after installation. They have, however, one catch - you have to adapt your business processes to the way the box system was designed. By contrast, implemented systems respect the specificities and competitive advantages hidden in the corporate processes of the company and are easily expandable. They are, however, more expensive solutions and their implementation can take up to several months.
Key questions
How do I know if I need a management system or if I just need an economic system?
In general, it can be said that you must have an economic system, while you must want to have a management system. If you want to have your business firmly by the reins and a vision of where your company should be in a few years, then you must have an ERP management system on site to help you reduce your dependency on individuals. A correctly installed ERP forces your company to ensure the standardization of your processes and compliance with rules and procedures. No company can therefore achieve a certain degree of maturity without such a system.
We have chaos in the company. Will the introduction of an information system bring order and resolve everything?
Yes and no. It all depends on how you proceed in selecting and deploying the system. If you assume that you are buying software that will solve everything by itself, you will be unpleasantly surprised by the result. However, if you choose to deploy a solution and involve the entire management in the pre-implementation analysis of your processes, it is very likely that you will get the desired effect. Assuming that you choose a reliable partner for the implementation.
Will a box solution suffice for us? Or should I go with the implementation solution?
In theory, you could say that if your processes have yet to be set up, a box solution is a good and inexpensive springboard. With respect to actual practice, however, it is worth saying that box systems are designed exclusively for small businesses, because the larger a company is, the more difficult it is for them to adjust to their preconfigured processes to box systems. Additional adjustments to the box solution are very expensive or even impossible.