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Disparate Applications vs 1 integrated solution

Disparate applications vs. 1 integrated

solution
Small companies are finding themselves at crossroad when deciding whether they should go for (a or
many) small IT solution very specific to their most painful area or go for integrated solution that can
meet the short term solution to reduce pain areas but also help them in meeting challenges that are
likely to appear in their path to grow and scale operations. We are taking calibration labs as a case study
for this paper but this dilemma is leaving number of leaders confused thus I hope this reading will be
helpful to the other small companys leaderships as well.
As I was recently talking to a small calibration lab based in eastern part of India and the point was
prominently and frankly discussed between two of us. The COO mentioned that, even though the idea
of one application appeals to him, but they already have many systems in their lab and he is not sure
whether any integrated application will be of any benefit to their organization.
Though there are many subjective reasons why one application looks more attractive in comparison to
many small applications but I knew without quantitative assessment, it will be difficult to make any
convincing argument in favor of integrated solution. So, I started working on collating various factors
that could contribute to quantification of benefits and conclusively establish the argument in favor or
against one integrated application.
Calibration Lab operations in nutshell: It is important to understand operations before we go further to
understand his dilemma

Quotation

Registraton of prospect
Followup Prospect
Find last quotation or
order
Send Quotation
Followup Quotation

Order Receipt

Reject
Inform Lab managers if
order is received
Inform Finance team after
order receipt

Calibration of
instruments

Order Receipt (SRF)

Register Service Request

Form
Record Instrument details
Create Job card
Assess Standards
availability
Assess engineers
workload
Assign Job card to
respective department for
calibration

Electrical

Mechanical

Thermal

(etc)

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Setup Lab Environment

Inspect Instrument under
calibration
Update instrument details
if required
Conduct Experiment

Record Observations

Calculate
Corrections

Record Corrected
observations

Calculate
Uncertainty of
Measurement
Send Observations for
review
On approval , print
calibration certificate
On rejection, conduct
experiment again

Invoice

Dispatch Certificates and

Instruments (if at lab)
Inform Finance team
Raise and send Invoice
Revenue realised

Black: Manual Operation

Red- Manual Task or
Process
Amber: Semi Application
(excel and manual)
Green: IT Application

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Highlights of the calibration operations :

Quotation stage:
1. Assignment to sales person is subjective and manual
2. Records and statistics are maintained partly or by individuals for the sake of calculating bonus or
sales incentive
3. Loss of last proposal (rejected ones ) when it was rejected on the basis of cost
4. Determine last quoted price from order and invoice is tedious task
5. Information to Lab Manager and Finance team is manual
Order receipts stage:
1. Register SRF is manual exercise
2. Registration of UUC is manual exercise and repeats itself everytime the instrument is received
for calibration
3. Creation of Job card is through IT application but limited to printing Job card
4. Send the paper copy of Job card to each department is manual
5. Assessment of workload and standard reference instruments is manual and many time received
after coordination with the lab managers
Calibration stage:
1. This is mostly manual activity except for calculations part (that are semi-automated with the
help of numerous spreadsheets (for each instrument class, ie one for Mass, volume, other for
surface plate)
2. Correction calculations and observations are also sourced from software that accompanied
hardware (ie standard instrument provider)
3. Observations are recorded on paper invariably whether sourced from machine or people
4. Uncertainty value are produced with the help of semi automated spreadsheets
5. Certificate printing is mostly manual activity, published by a separate department mostly called
reporting section
Invoicing stage:
1. Information to invoicing team wrt calibration completed is manual and depends highly on
coordination between Lab managers and Finance team
2. Certificates are routed through invoicing team to plug any leakage

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Though for all practical purposes, the above machinery and system of flow is working since many years,
there are some potential pitfalls at many points and drop of ball by departments during the lifecycles
many a times. But if we look deeper there are many activities that can result in reducing the cost. Most
common mistake we do in assessing feasibility of software is not considering the benefit of automating
processes which is clearly evident from the landscape earlier. Following class of factors are considered
1. Monetary cost & Benefits
2. Cost of Time or Efficiency advantage
3. Subjective factors that cannot be assessed
Following table summarise the factors that requires to be considered for apple to apple comparison,
better to cumulate the cost over a period of two to three years as the cost of new application may be
higher in first year but may provide good return in following years. We are assuming one core solution
is being sourced as hosted solution on software as service basis.
Sr.No

Factor Narrative

Class A
A.1

Monetary
Cumulative Cost of managing Software

A.2

Cost of maintaining hardware and other IT

assets where software are hosted
Paper cost (operations that are still being
done on paper and by people), cost of
paper, its safe keeping and people to be
included in the cost.
Cost of operations (report sections)

A.3

A.4

A.5

Cost of manpower coordinating between

various functions within the enterprise

Class B
B.1

Time
Access to Past data

B.2

Lead time to act or react

Many Application

One Integrated
Application (hosted
Software as service
solution)

Operational cost of
small applications
(license/AMC cost)
(AMC/Repair/Backup
cost)
Cost of printed
stationary consumed
per year

No license or AMC
cost, cost is part of in
per month usage cost
Zero, as cost is part of
per month usage cost
Publish the document
in software thus print
only if required

Cost of recording data

and publishing
certificates

Engineers can publish

report themselves
thus making report
section redundant
Processes automated
in the application
thus coordination is
automatic

Cost of coordinator

Time spent in record

room to unearth old
archived records
Manual coordination
thus lead time is +ve
may depend on size
and spread of
organization

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In a matter of few
clicks
Information is very
much real time

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B.3

Resource Productivity and workload

management

B.4

Timely engagement with customer and

retention or attrition rate of customer

Class C
C.1

Qualitative Factors
Improvement in quality of work delivered

C.2

Improvement in customer satisfaction for

delivering consistent Excellent delivery
Employee satisfaction, are employees
being assessed on quantitative measures
(number of instrument calibrated, number
of sales made)

C.3

C.4

Information in hand

C.5

Data loss or theft

Uneven or unbalanced
workload at many
times amongst
engineers also amongst
different labs
Number of times
customers lost due to
poor response or some
other competitor
engaged with customer
earlier then you

User can balance the

workload as
dashboard highlights
task on everyone tray

Clerical and typo

mistakes get released
sometimes (pl specify
on average per year)
Satisfaction is derived
from quality delivered
Lack of statistics wrt
work delivered by
employees often leads
to subjective and unfair
appraisal
Not always,
information archival is
heavy job and often
requires number of
days
New competitors
started by past
employees of the
organization, who took
valuable data on
spreadsheets
alongwith them

All data standardized

, clerical and typo
errors removed
Assured quality
Statistics is handy at
any point of time and
could be used as
basis for appraisal.
In hand at any point
of day for any
customer or product
class
Data is managed
within application,
Information could be
accessed only if
authorized and
exported in
meaningful
spreadsheet by
authorized person
only

I will be thankful to readers for their comments and feedback on any factor that I might have missed to
mention.

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