Small Business Software Consultancy

Over the course of the consultancy, Sapere assisted Digital City in helping many SME businesses.

The SME’s were from varying industries including Oil & Gas, Heavy Engineering, Pharmaceutical, sports, safety and service industries.

Problem

The diversity of the project delivery meant there wasn’t just one problem, but these were the common ones:

  • Businesses operating inefficient software solutions where duplicate information was recorded but not linked between systems.
  • Businesses often using lots of spreadsheets, created by different people over many years. These then became fundamental to the operation of the business whilst the spreadsheets tended to introduce many inefficiencies, duplications of effort and ever more human error into the business.
  • Staff in the businesses were spending longer to perform their duties because of the lack of technology integration.
  • Lack of technology awareness resulting in a need for help with technology choices and proposed options to enable SME’s to create a solution or a software platform.

Solution

With each of the businesses, Sapere spent time listening to key staff and exploring all the areas of the business and any IT and software – if relevant. We then spent time researching available solutions to core issues and problems. This was done so a bespoke report could be created which would outline a solution for the specific problem faced by the SME.

The final report detailed the possible solutions and options available to enable innovation and growth and to prevent current and future inefficiencies within the business. The report also detailed possible timescales, costs, things to consider such as hosting architecture, resilience, and disaster recovery – if a software solution was the right one.

The consultancy project for Digital City has been well received and many businesses have benefitted from the advice provided.

Business Benefits

The following business benefits have been realised by the SMEs involved in the program.

  • Detailed development roadmaps – each business had a realistic roadmap of development so the whole project didn’t need to be done in one go.
  • Options – the solutions include elements of off the shelf solutions. If the solution warrants it and there is a product we can recommend then it will be recommended. This saves cost, development time and there’s no point reinventing the wheel!
  • The solution to unlock growth potential and innovation!
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