Crisis response measures in IT: not cost reduction, but restructuring

Microsoft Business Forum 2008 which passed in Moscow was devoted, naturally, to problems of financial crisis and its overcoming and, respectively, reorientation of strategy of use of ERP and CRM systems and in general the strategy of korpoartivny investments into IT. According to Vladimir Vodianov, the head of department of MBS Russia if "yesterday's" business solutions were focused on conditions of the growing market, its gaining and work with "shaft" of new clients, then solutions of today should be expected, first of all, cost reduction and preserving of the existing customer base.

It changed also approaches to the choice of business applications (meaning not the general growth of capitalization of the company, and to capability of these solutions to increase a current profit). Besides, if until recently implementation of ERP in Russia meant, most often, complex automation with orientation to the best western business practices, then now the confidence to these practicians is partly undermined, and implementation of ERP will pursue more likely the aims of point automation and closing of the most shouting "holes".

Nevertheless, Olga Sterkhova warns, the associated partner of the leading consulting company McKinsey, it is not necessary to cut down without grounds at all expenses on IT as the competent and thought-over implementation of IT technologies is capable to reduce costs of the organization considerably. As crisis response measures she suggests to review contracts with system integrators, to consider the possibility of creation of own Competence Centers, to consolidate IT resources and to transfer a maximum of works to less expensive regions (it concerns, for example, placement of infrastructure and technical support services of clients); and also to automate, first of all, such tasks as the analysis of KPI, optimization of demand, reduction of idle times.

If need to reduce IT budgets nevertheless is present, Olga Sterkhova says, then IT projects should be estimated not on the scale of their tasks, and to analyze ROI in each case (at first sight, small projects can seem less significant, but at the same time bring big return). Besides, it is worth thinking over the organization of work of the IT service – standardizing transactions (especially for the simple, repeating tasks), to group the employees in degree of their qualification and to distribute tasks taking into account this qualification and also to organize regular (perhaps, daily) monitoring of results of work of IT department.

At a forum of Challahs Howard, the director of development of ERP solutions of Microsoft corporation, submitted the strategy of development for software products of the Microsoft Dynamics family, including in relation to Russia.

So, according to him the "freshest" version of the ERP system of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (5.0) released at the beginning of this June should appear in Russia approximately in the middle of the next year. In it more than 400 new features will be, allegedly, provided. From the point of view of users, in a system the role interface is implemented and 30 predetermined roles are configured. All communicating processes (with clients, employees, partners and suppliers) – by means of instant messaging or voice calls are unified. By means of the digital signature any changes in a system (all transactions or changes in settings) are registered. Web services and in general implementation of service-oriented architecture, including access to business processes of the ERP system of other applications are finished.

Besides, parameters of performance and scalability are significantly improved. By calculations of the developer, performance of transaction processing grew more than six times in comparison with the previous version 4.0 (320,000 transaction lines per hour on six business divisions). The implemented support of the MS SQL Server of 2008 will allow to work both with compressed, and with uncompressed databases.

In addition to key functions, a standard ERP system includes industry functionality on five industries: production (discrete and continuous), distribution, retail, professional services and public sector (state. organizations).

The localized version for Russia, as expected, will include support of accounting of the VAT on export-import transactions, the improved client bank interface and also support of the Russian specifics in the field of personnel management and payroll.

This summer in Russia the localized version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 was officially submitted. In addition to role interfaces, in it web services were for the first time implemented, the new environment for a reporting preparation is offered and also the three-level architecture is implemented (with the separate application server). Industry (vertical and micro vertical) the functionality is presented only in solutions of partners.

In the first half of 2009, by words Howard's Challah, in Russia there has to be the first updating of this ERP system in which such opportunities as creation of electronic tax statements, performing transactions of a reversal in fixed asset accounting and also accounting of the VAT on export-import transactions will be implemented. The next version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 (6.0) in Russia is expected at the end of 2009 - the beginning of 2010.

As for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the current version 4.0 is available in Russia since March, 2008. Emergence of the following, fifth version is expected at the end of 2010.