Use IT to change processes

Construction companies that install IT software that merely modernises their existing operational pathways are missing an opportunity to fundamentally restructure their business processes, according to Cliff Gladwin, a construction and housebuilding sector specialist with Welcom Business Builders.
Gladwin said: "A software company's agenda is to protect its client base, to enhance it and then increase its revenue flow, rather than act as a true partner in change.
"To be truly innovative calls for a lot of unravelling. But without that, all you get is a new set of answers to the old questions. The decision to invest in a new IT system should be the moment when you ask different questions in order to get different solutions."
Welcom Business Builders, which has a staff of 80 and an annual turnover of £5m, was an IT software supplier but has widened its profile to that of a strategy consultancy. Marketing manager Laura Ashworth said: "We're called in by businesses that want to re-evaluate their processes. IT change is secondary to that more fundamental re-evaluation and could be 12 months further down the line."
Welcom is targeting poorer performing housebuilders that languish in the sector's bottom quartile. "It's the ones making margins of less than 10% that we are attacking first," said Gladwin.
He advocates the introduction of touch-screen kiosks on building sites, arguing that conventional technology on site doesn't get used.
Gladwin said: "Workers with large hands don't want to work a mouse. You also have problems with rain and wet conditions. The touch-screen kiosk approach gets round all that; you can get to whatever you want in just four touches."