ABOUT PROACT AMERICAS

ProAct’s knowledge, experience and track record of designing, developing and deploying supply chain solutions is extensive, it is global and it spans many market sectors. This experience has enabled ProAct be highly innovative, creative and ever relevant to the market.  Many in-house development teams suffer from the fact that ‘they know what they know’ and often have not been exposed to the wider industry which can often limit their ability to be creative, innovative and ground breaking.

The development of any new corporate system is potentially a massive move. Many companies don’t realise that as much as 50% of the development effort is in establishing the code infrastructure and frameworks. This represents all of the ‘much have’, critical functionality, that the end users don’t see and don’t directly benefit from. It is analogous to an iceberg, where only a small part is visible to the onlooker.  If this infrastructure work is not done, it is likely to restrict the ongoing evolution of the product, especially in areas such as scalability, performance and the user experience.

ProAct’s ESM has all of this infrastructure and in addition a vast array of global, multi-modal supply chain functionality already built and tested. This equates to many man years of effort. Often, business cannot really afford to take this kind of ‘hit’ in terms of time, money and disruption. Often, by the time the solution is developed, it no longer reflects the needs of the business.

The ProAct ESM is built on current, industry standard, scalable and continually evolving technology. It is wholly browser based, highly collaborative and supports device integration from mobile devices to GPS feeds. Many companies embarking on a new development may well not have the skills or experience in more current technologies and techniques or indeed may be restricted by internal policies or practices

ProAct’s culture and technology means solutions can be deployed quickly and safely, therefore reducing cost, risk and also ongoing maintenance. New systems created in-house or otherwise will inevitably go through a lengthy period of pain until all issues are ironed out. This, of course, adds to cost and disruption.  ProAct’s ESM is already a mature and proven solution, designed for rapid deployment. We must also not forget that with any new system there must be a reliable, repeatable deployment methodology. Again, this is where ProAct’s already proven  approach, can reduce cost and risk over that of an in-house approach.

ProAct can enhance the capabilities and value of an internal IT team through continual knowledge transfer and therefore contribute to the training and knowledge base of the client’s internal departments. This in turn, gives the internal IT team as much control over the ProAct solution as they wish to take on and  reduces any long term reliance on ProAct resources. Bringing new skills in-house via recruitment or consultancy can often be a long and very costly process for a business and will often not achieve the desired goal.  ProAct’s culture is to give the in-house IT team as much knowledge and control over their destiny as they want or need and in a less disruptive and costly manner.

ProAct’s solution and it’s underlying technology has been designed to be highly configurable and as such vastly reduces the need for the client to constantly return to ProAct to implement new processes. Coupled with the innovative technology and speed to market, ProAct’s solution can often be licensed and implemented for less that the in-house maintenance budget. In a majority of cases,  ProAct can show that the outsourcing approach will be more strategic , lower risk, less disruptive and lower cost than the in house route.

There are many incentives to bring a development project in-house, especially if the business has a significant IT department resource to support and keep busy. However, when in-sourcing is driven primarily by this fact, it can often be doomed to failure.  Timescales will often drag and costs escalate and become open ended. Outsourced costs and budgets with ProAct are firm, predictable and often linked to milestones deliverables. The incentive for all parties to be focused on delivery, is therefore at the forefront of any project.

Many organisations forget that once developed, most corporate solutions must be supported on a 24/7 basis.  Many, may not already have the resource and forget that all of the support staff also need to be trained, should a problem be routed to any individual. Support alone, can account for a consideration budget item to any business. ProAct already have an established, reliable and respected 24/7 support operation. It is resourced by staff with an in depth knowledge of the ProAct application and is available at far less of a cost than setting up a 24/7 in-house operation.

Often, many in-house IT departments become reliant on key resources that hold much of the knowledge. If that resource leaves or even takes a vacation, significant disruption can often occur. ProAct however, distributes its knowledge right through it’s own business and indeed the client’s business, ensuring reliance never falls to one person. This therefore dramatically reduces the risk of ‘knowledge pockets’ and reliance on key individuals.  Our clients can also draw on ProAct’s resource, as and when needed to support them in ongoing activities, should there own resource be stretched. Many larger businesses often assume that smaller software companies cannot respond quickly or may not have sufficient resources to deal with their needs, whereas the reality is more typically the opposite. ProAct works with major global organisations, supporting critical parts of their global supply chain operations.

Many businesses argue that they will loose control of their IT strategy and destiny, if they outsource. This may be true with the traditional package approach where customer driven enhancements are either prohibited or dealt with in a bespoke and costly manner.  The ProAct approach  however can be shown to give the business more control over their strategy, roadmap and costs.  There is little that cannot be achieved by outsourcing to ProAct that could be achieved in house and in a majority of cases, at lower cost.

ProAct understand the challenges and goals of each business are different. As such, ProAct will always work with the client to offer technical and financial models that fit exactly with the business needs.  A wide selection of licensing and deployment costs models mean that there should always be a cost effective approach to any implementation.  With an in-house approach, where the cost based tends to be fixed and may run on for many years after delivery, it is much harder to align budget with cash flow.

All of the arguments above mean that the ROI can often be as little as a year and typically well within 5 years. This is normally far less than the in house approach where there is a fixed cost base that must be funded years after the solution is delivered.