|
|
About portal software, intranet development and extranet
solutions.
|
iport4business Ltd
Suite2, Airdrie Business Centre
Airdrie ML6 6GX
Scotland
United Kingdom
T: 01236 439447
E: info@iport4business.com
|
|
|
the traditional IT model
|
Most traditional IT systems build up over time and therefore create what are essentially “islands of information” within the organisation.
These systems all hold information about customers, products, assets, staff members, etc. in isolation of each other. It is rare to find any meaningful joins.
|
| |
The second major issue with these systems is that the only way to access the information is to learn the application. Finance and ERP systems are notoriously specialised systems and are often not suited to casual enquiries. Many organisations still rely on custom or modified legacy systems for core applications.
Licensing is also a problem: most of these systems require a valid (and expensive) user license for each user.
To compound it all, they may even operate on different technology platforms: for example the Finance system may be in UNIX whilst the sales and marketing data is held in Microsoft SQL and yet others run in Oracle.
Finally, and arguably most importantly, there is simply no possibility of allowing customers/suppliers/web users access to these systems in this format. Many proprietary systems do now, of course, offer web “front ends”; but often this is no more than a browser screen hastily attached onto the original interface with no real thought for what must be achieved.
And there are many organisations which operate globally with divisions throughout the world, in different time zones, responding to different business drivers and using different software applications. Drawing the threads of these kinds of operations into a coherent Executive Information System is challenging without the aid of a robust, low-cost, flexible piece of technology.
That is why iport is such an important development.
|
|
