ERP, Business Process Automation, and the “Secret Sauce”

ERP, Business Process Automation, and the "Secret Sauce"
Did you ever wonder why some companies just seem to prosper with everything they set their mind to do? I had a customer who told me it was his "secret sauce", I certainly admire his gumption, his street smarts, and his secret sauce. We teamed up for a while to automate his business process and in doing so he bottled his secret sauce and is more successful than ever.

Another customer we have is the owner of a very successful dealership. The dealership came packaged with many suggested business processes for sales, marketing, and project management. We teamed up to automate the entire dealership process and now that we have that genie in a bottle he has increased his business by 50% AND he did it without increasing his available resources. In fact he lost two of his key people at the busiest part of the season and never lost a sale or was late on any of the projects. He can also take vacations and business trips and he knows that his business is being run the right way.

As I attended the Welding Automation: A Forum for Small and Medium Companies, and spoke with some of the delegates, I was impressed with the success stories, and every single one of the oil patch welding entrepreneurs were talking about needing to expand their services, hire more people, and they were all wondering how it could be done. The fact is they have the secret sauce in Edmonton, Calgary, or Vancouver and they can't be two or more places at once. This is a dilemma that every small and mid-sized company has, they need to grow but they can't seem to be able to franchise their business. There is a solution and it is called Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP. As soon as you have your business processes automated and therefore standardized and enforced within the organization, you can then happily open up any number of satellite offices and be confident that your business is being run the way you want it. A well placed ERP system will pay you back within a year and will make you more money going forward.

This morning I received a call from seeTelligence (www.seetelligence.com) and they are the epitome of business intelligence and proprietary business process. They have a system they sell to retailers that captures a very specific set of marketing principles and processes and automates those processes. seeTelligence also reports to the EuroCent what the return on investment is for each of the marketing campaigns and coupons. Just another way to preserve a business process so that it can be actually productized and sold more and more profitably. Be on the lookout for seeTelligence this year, they will be a European and North American powerhouse, selling their "secret sauce".