What are the major issues facing water cooler company software and route optimisation at the moment?
Aquis: One of the major Information and Communication Technology (ICT) issues facing water cooler companies, or any company, at the moment is when and how to adopt cloud computing. The benefits derived from computer systems, communication systems and associated software are essential to the profitability of any business, but especially to water cooler companies.
However, the total cost of ownership of in-house ICT infrastructure and software licences has become a significant overhead when all associated management, administration and support costs are included.
Companies of all types that have started to adopt cloud computing for all or part of their ICT infrastructure are realising savings of as much as 50% in total cost of ownership.
Aquis Systems are a classic case study. They were pioneer adopters of outsourcing ICT infrastructure, starting as early as 2001, long before the term cloud computing became fashionable. Aquis’ own savings over 10 years have been at least 50%, and their experience as users and providers of cloud computing services has enabled them to simultaneously reduce expenses and to shift expense from overhead to direct cost.
For companies looking to reduce overhead cost, implementation of cloud computing is a must-have. The issues are timing and know-how. Timing, for instance, may depend on the age and write-off values of existing in-house assets. If servers or telephone equipment are coming to the end of their useful life, it makes little sense to purchase new assets and assume an ongoing liability for associated management, administration and support costs, when there are cost and other benefits available if you buy the infrastructure as a service.
A more significant issue is management time and know-how. ICT infrastructure is an essential daily requirement in maintaining service levels and profitability. Therefore, change management is an essential component of any revolutionary change in ICT provision. The implementation of cloud computing is without doubt a revolutionary step, and the transition from fully in-house to completely cloud-based needs to be well managed and orderly.
Activewhere: The major challenge in the water cooler software industry will always be to increase the degree of automation in the software, with more (artificial) intelligence onboard.
A water cooler business has many customers, produces lots of invoices, delivery notes and other customer interaction type items, making it impossible to manage one’s business activity on a conventional basis. To address this, we need to see customers as ‘clusters’, define automatic business rules and go ahead.
In its day-to-day activity, water cooler companies should only attend exceptions, while most of the business is managed automatically by the software. This is what you need if you want to grow your business in a fast and savvy manner. Everybody in this industry knows this is the challenge, but not everybody knows that Activewhere exists and has very effective solutions to address this and other challenges.
It’s astonishing to see how sizeable companies using large Enterprise Resource Planning systems such as SAP, Microsoft and Oracle as their base corporate software, need to rely on specific software IT companies like Activewhere to manage their water cooler businesses. This is true for Nestlé Waters Direct, our biggest corporate customer.
One other challenge is technological. Cloud computing and cloud-based services are rapidly changing the landscape of IT. Cloud computing refers to the on-demand provision of computational resources (data, software) via a computer network rather than from a local computer. Users or clients can submit a task such as word processing to the service provider without actually possessing the software or hardware.
The consumer’s computer may contain very little software or data (perhaps a minimal operating system and web browser only), serving as a basic display terminal connected to the internet. Since the cloud is the underlying delivery mechanism, cloud-based applications and services may support any type of software application or service in use today. This is opening unprecedented opportunities for IT companies as well as for IT consumers to lower their operating costs while improving their services.
Mobile Enterprise Systems: Escalating fuel costs mean that the cost per delivery is constantly increasing. As with all companies, water cooler companies are concerned with environmental issues, so they’re under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint.
A large number of administration and office personnel are required to manage the ‘manual’ processes in the water cooler business, meaning that staffing costs are high.
How are you working to meet these challenges?
Aquis: For several years now, we’ve offered applications as both a traditionally licensed product installed on in-house servers and as a Software as a Service (SaaS) product, running on fully shadowed cloud servers.
Aquis has been using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) since 2001 to host our development and backup servers, and since 2005 to host production application servers for our SaaS products.
Activewhere: As for the first challenge (automation and artificial intelligence), we work closely with our customers to better our existing processes with automatic invoicing, delivery generation, data correction, address geo-coding, route scheduling, direct-debit processing and credit control processing.
We’re also developing a brand new cloud-based version to improve our products and services, while being aligned with current IT market trends.
Mobile Enterprise Systems: Our system has full route optimisation functionality, which will substantially reduce delivery and vehicle costs.
Our system eliminates unnecessary paperwork, resulting in less cost to the business and a greener approach. We believe it will also reduce administration and office staffing costs by 50%.
What new software or adaptations do you have for the marketplace in 2011?
Aquis: This year, we’ve set up a new division to provide cloud services and consultancy in order to help other companies transition their ICT from an in-house service to a cloud-based service. These services are totally separated from our application software products and are available to any company, irrespective of whether they use our software or not.
Activewhere: ‘Internet’ and ‘mobility’ are our keywords for 2011. Our customers will see more and more features available in our web portal and mobile applications.
Mobile Enterprise Systems: This year, we’re introducing paperless driver run sheets, paperless delivery notes (emailed after delivery) and paperless invoicing (sent by email).
How can your software help boost a company’s profits?
Aquis: Innovations in software and hardware, particularly in respect of smartphones and tablet computers, are placing ever greater emphasis on remote access to applications software, whether this is data capture by drivers or increasing use of home working. This will drive up the cost of providing network infrastructure for in-house servers and will accelerate the drive towards cloud computing.
However, in conjunction with cloud computing, these innovations will reduce ICT spend and increase people productivity.
Activewhere: By simply relying on our software to do the tedious part of the business, water cooler companies are able to focus on strategy, sales and marketing.
Mobile Enterprise Systems: Our software can significantly reduces administration costs and reduce vehicle and fuel costs. It also helps project a professional company image. Customers are invoiced accurately every time and the cooler database tracks locations and ensures that coolers don’t get ‘lost’.
Do you have any green initiatives in the pipeline?
Aquis: Cloud computing is essentially a green and economic initiative. The economics of the cloud are derived from sharing computing and networking resource across millions of users in thousands of companies. This aspect alone significantly reduces the carbon footprint of hosting any software application when compared to in-house servers.
Activewhere: Our automatic route management module, combined with our handheld application, has enabled our customers to save hundreds of thousands of euros in overtime payment, using less fuel to make more deliveries. This is a sustainable, green approach.
How has the development of mobile technology helped your business?
Aquis: Innovation in mobile technology is both a challenge and an opportunity. As a software provider, the challenge is to provide affordable mobile applications that are not made immediately redundant by the rapid change and innovation in mobile hardware.
As a business, the opportunity is to use mobile technology and cloud technology to deliver improved services at lower cost. By constantly reviewing the technology we use in-house, and pushing more of our infrastructure into the cloud, we’ve reduced our annual ICT costs by more than 50% from a 2001 base without taking inflation into account.
Activewhere: The advantage was obvious, as it meant one more appealing product to sell (our handheld application, Pocket Activewhere). To our customers, mobility has helped them to increase control and significantly reduce costs. To give an example, when a customer wants to open a new depot, he doesn’t have to have a local structure to manage the warehouse. The drivers simply have a handheld [that’s] connected directly to the central database, where all relevant activity is read and recorded (deliveries, maintenances, claims etc). This information is synchronised throughout the day, keeping everyone informed.
Pocket Activewhere has had a huge impact on our customers’ cost structure.
Hannah Oakman is editor of Cooler Innovation magazine. Subscribe here.
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