The four pillars of success: Keep the doing of business simple

Our Microsoft practice has four key pillars that guide our approach to improving customer enterprise applications – Simplify, Modernise, Accelerate and Reimagine.

We use these principles to rethink enterprise applications and deliver solutions that help you transform your business. 

Simplicity is something businesses strive to achieve. The easier it is for your staff to use applications and for customers to interact with your business, the more efficient, productive, and profitable your organisation will be.

After all, the K.I.S.S. principle still makes sense and it is something a business owner or line manager will quickly identify with; simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

In the enterprise environment, making things simple reveals itself in different ways. A prime area to consider is consolidating existing IT architectures and reducing multiple third-party solutions. An IT landscape can become complex quickly if your business has applications hosted on different infrastructures. Standardising your environment in the cloud will remove many headaches and ensure your operating system remains supported and up-to-date.

It is also worth thinking about moving to one integrated ERP platform rather than managing multiple line-of-business systems that demand numerous integration points. A modern ERP system has prebuilt integrations, right down to the granular field level. As a result, all the various departments, such as financials, purchasing, and inventory, can talk to each other seamlessly.

An example of an obvious but powerful simplification is examining how your users go about their daily business tasks. How easy is it for them to operate your existing applications? Are you making the most of the IT skills they have already mastered?

For this reason, and for those mentioned above, organisations are adopting Microsoft Business Applications built on the security and reliability of Microsoft Azure. They are designed specifically to leverage users’ proficiency with Microsoft 365, with over 90% of organisations globally using Microsoft productivity tools across their organisation. The screens for these powerful CRM and ERP applications are recognisable to people who may never have encountered them before. 

The interface and the logic behind how the various apps operate are recognisable to anyone who has a passing familiarity with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Similarly, users who typically spend most of their time in Microsoft Outlook can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 to access key CRM functionality seamlessly embedded within the email application. As a result, information is easier to find and easier to send to the people who need to see it.

This contrasts with other ERP and CRM applications that are often seen as ‘alien’ systems when introduced to the workplace. A significant amount of time and cost is then spent on upskilling and providing support to users who find the logic behind the user interface unfamiliar.

User acceptance is based on how easy it is for your workforce to execute their daily tasks. For this reason, considering the end-user is essential—they ultimately determine the success of any implemented application. 

Simplify in action: Read this case study to find out how we helped the Queensland Treasury Corporation increase automation and drive employee engagement.