“The future depends on what you do today.”
Mahatma GandhiAny data collected by the organization is a key performance indicator that helps to accelerate productivity and accuracy. Every industry depends upon its size has its ways of storing their data. The ways of getting data and storing them mainly depends on the type of industry like Small business , SME's and Enterprise level.
The data stored might be a ledger note written by hand or an excel sheet with data filled in it or a huge ERP software.
There are quite a few problems in these ways of storing the data- Having a written ledger note means the data present in it is scattered and searching for specific information has to be done by going through hundreds of pages. Also, storing and preserving the ledgers are some of the disadvantages of this method.
- Using an excel sheet is an upgrade compared to the written ledger notes, but this also has multiple disadvantages when it comes to data privacy, hardware dependency and sharing of data.
- Having an ERP system will help in eliminating most of the disadvantages when using the above two methods. However, the main disadvantage in having a system like this for Small business/SMEs is1.Cost of the software.
2.A dedicated IT team to maintain the system.
3.Lack of user friendliness of the application/limited customization of the software.
These are only a few of the hurdles faced by an organization when they want to store and use the data.
To solve the above mentioned problems, one of the suggested ways for you/your organization will be creating a custom application on a cloud platform. The term custom application means.
- Creating an application that is tailored according to your business which should also allow you to support customization on a need basis (for both planned and dynamic needs).
- Eliminating the need to change your business procedures to fit a pre-developed software product.
- Save money on hardware acquisition costs since the solution is designed in cloud.
- Any issues that arise can be resolved quickly and efficiently by a dedicated vendor support.
As mentioned above if you are using any of the methods like writing or using excel or getting a huge software, you will be faced with the same challenges.
Let us take a sample use case here.
Assuming you have a small manufacturing unit which manufactures parts of machinery, engines, wheels, etc.
The manufacturing unit has to take care of
- Production1.Tracking raw materials.
2.Tracking the end product.
3.Quality check. - Inventory1.Tracking inward stock.
2.Tracking warehouse stocks.
3.Tracking outward stock.
- Invoice1.Tracking sales.
2.Generating Invoice.
3.Tracking Invoice.
So, the manufacturing unit creates a custom cloud application comprises of Production module, Inventory Module, Finance Module.
All the production related data will be entered and stored in the production module. The inventory module helps in storing and tracking real time inventory data. The finance module allows you to track the sales, invoicing and payment receipts/dues from the customers.
Few other industries that can benefit from the Cloud with the similar business needs are :
1.Healthcare
2.Automotive
3.Finance
4.Education
5.Insurance
6.Real Estate
7.Farming
8.Non profit
9.Hospitality
10.Logistics
Conclusion
Having a Custom cloud application built for an organization will not only help you in storing the data in a centralized way, but also ensure the flow of data in organized manner. This helps to manage the data efficiently to analyze and also increase the productivity with full fledged automation. More importantly, the applications built using low code technologies will be accessed from mobile/tab/web from anywhere.
Zoho Creator, one of the low code cloud platforms enables the organizations to have a smooth transfer of centralizing the data and also efficiently manage them without much difficulties.