Remote Control Business Procedures

Remote Control Business Procedures
Back in the late 80’s we were hooking up remote control business process for the US Air Force and the JSTARS program. The Engineers and Scientists in our Command Center in Boston demanded the same data we were producing in the test facility in Melbourne, Florida, so we figured out how to get it up to Boston as quickly as possible. So since those heady days, we’ve discovered how to make the internet work for the civilian world, and better yet how to automate our businesses using the Web. All of this technology has made it possible for the CEO to run the business by remote control. With increasingly demanding global businesses, the CEO can no longer be in the same building with all staff, in fact can rarely be in the same time zone or even country. So in order to keep any semblance of order and balance in the life of a CEO something has to be setup to run the company by “remote control”. There are three primary tools to create this process and they are, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Business Process Management (BPM).

ERP gives the CEO and other “C” level people the ability to model and sculpt the organization to fit the objectives of the company. The system controls all operational aspects of the business such as sales, closed loop marketing, scheduling, ordering and other B2B activities, job management (purchase orders, variance purchase orders, invoices), customer service and product support, warehousing, delivery, and project execution. The CEO designs and/or approves the ERP methodologies and then the CEO can watch and report from remote locations. Up until recently the cost of ERP was prohibitive to all but Big Business. Now with the advent of affordable networking through the internet, and rapid development programming tools, ERP is available to all businesses and gives you the control that you need to play in the big leagues.

CRM is the heart of the sales process and is an old staple of the business community, available to all businesses large and small for many years. What makes the new versions special is the way the internet has freed CRM from the desks of all the people in the company and made the customer information available to everyone in the organization with the rights to view it. You can now share the customer information database, collaborate on sales, marketing, support, and project initiatives. A Web-based CRM gives the CEO the freedom to be anywhere in the world and to see how the company is managing relationships, how the sales program is progressing, and how contracts are being managed. A good CRM lets the CEO decide when to get involved with management.

BPM is the process of automating business processes that are generally critical to the success of the business. There are many approaches to automation, we believe that it is most effective to take the approach of socializing your business. This means that you open up your processes to internal business partners and employees as well as contractors and customers. So business processes such as project or program management, customer support, education management, and Human Resources are automated so the processes are collaborative and open to the collective intelligence of the entire company and all associated parties.