Where to start? How to do it? What are the benefits? Which approach to choose?
Those were the first questions we asked ourselves when we decided that we must digitize our workflows.
First about the company EXOTERM-IT d.o.o.. Many people think that that EXOTERM-IT d.o.o. is computer company due company name ending -IT, but it really isn’t. EXOTERM-IT d.o.o. was founded in 2002 and is one of the leading manufacturers and suppliers of auxiliary materials for foundries and metallurgy in South-East Europe. Our top-quality products and services, which are the result of highly professional and creative development, provide optimal solutions for the most demanding users.
We are using ERP system from the beginning of company existence, so we were familiar with entering data into databases through programs. But our supportive workflows were going on in old »analogous« way. For example, we had printed forms for different things, which were fulfilled manually and then brought physically to the responsible person who took those forms and transcript them into the system. So duplicate work was going on and some of the forms were lost on the way…
So which approach to choose? While I was reading book Digital Strategy: A Guide to Digital Business Transformation few days ago I found out that there are 2 approaches at digitizing business processes. The first approach is guided by the centralization of digital work and the second is guided by the decentralization of digital work.
We started with digitization of our business processes in 2014. In the process of our digitalization we made several different systems and bought some systems as well. We have one main system called ExoManager and few subsystems which were made specifically for each department in company; warehouse, production unit, quality control… (more about those systems in the following posts in our news section). Actually, we have unconsciously chosen a somewhat decentralized approach.
In the next few posts I will show you our current path in the process of digitalization… Until then best regards…
Andraž Čevka