Background
UK markets make up for 5% of global outsourcing, considering that the critical stakes business functions too had been outsourced or privatized, the UK market offers unique opportunities and equally competitive markets. The solutions available for enterprises come from local independent software vendors and large enterprises alike. Getting in requires a specific approach
PROBLEM / OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
Stiff competition is an understatement when it comes to the UK market, the business growth could have stagnated in some industries, however that's where the opportunities emerge, as these industries are looking to optimize and reduce their expenses, software is one very expensive way of going about saving money.
CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS
Owing to the nature of deployment and critical nature of operations, any technical failure would immediately result in millions of losses, so a robust, thin client architecture with hybrid computing models had be designed at product engineering stage and instant remote assistance was enabled as part of the SLR requirements.
KEY OBSERVATIONS
Clients were welcoming of new solution models, particularly from an enthusiastic crowd of entrepreneurs. They were happy to share their key pain areas and showcase current solutions and what they did not like about their solutions. This helped build a robust solution architecture and brilliant contract model that the clients readily accepted.
SOLUTION
A business process specific solution was proposed, however the proposal was made to five distinct industries, that included Healthcare, Food Processing, Facilities Management, Agro Production and Warehouse Management.
APPROACH TO SOLUTION
The user interviews with impact business groups were conducted, two local experts with right kind of connections were partnered with two industry analysts, each interview was followed up with a systems requirement study report, proposal of a solution and first year free pilot contract offer.
KEY SOLUTION METRICS
Of the five enterprises interviewed and software product launch committed, all of them accepted a year long pilot run, result in contract value of US $1.25 million YoY
SOLUTION LIMITATIONS
The proposals key takeaway was its risk governance, unless adequate risk mitigation was considered, the adoption and essentially the sales of enterprise solution could not have happened.
PROCESS APPLIED
Communication quality, frequency of communication and material exchange was the main focus. Since an idea was collected from user groups and each idea became a functional part of an enterprise product, the build of the product at each crucial stage was shared and feedback collected, integrated into product development iterations. The product was designed to be dynamic and user driven in nature and some of the most flexible data input, custom workflow and templated output generation was made possible.
REVENUE IMPACT
Solutions introduced saved tremendous effort hours in process functions, the impact of savings by one estimate was seven hours per functional task.
AD-HOC CONTRIBUTORS
The product that got made became a very comprehensive, industry agnostic solution, thus is being able to be offered in multiple markets.
KEY BENEFITS OF SOLUTION
Solution is an absolute cost reduction enabler, thus the solution could retailed as "No Cost" solution with billing happening from the savings it delivers.