Q: You actually won an award for this project didn’t you: Aeromark’s Innovative Project of the Year?
Simon: Aeromark staff reviewed all of their customer projects from that year and they gave us the Innovative Project of the Year award, because of the amount of changes they ended up doing for us!
When we were doing the planning we’d be asking them if certain things would be possible and they’d go off and find out if they could make them happen, which most of the time they could!
Q: What did it mean to you and the company to win an award like this?
Simon: It was a nice validation of our hard work, definitely.
Q: So in your department, do you prefer to use off the shelf solutions or do you need to use bespoke ones?
Simon: We tend to try and use off the shelf stuff as often as we can. We have been a little bit singed in the past using bespoke solutions, as suppliers have stopped working in that market and then you struggle to find people to take over.
Last year we were looking for a replacement finance package and one of our main criteria was that it must be off the shelf. We didn’t want to have any major changes.
Rob: Part of the problem is the more customisation you need from a single party, the more risk it adds.
Q: Do you have a specific IT strategy at AutoRestore?
Simon: Our strategy is to make sure that we provide the tools the business needs, and which offers as little risk as possible.
Rob: Our strategy is aligned with the business strategy really. That’s our primary goal: that whatever the business wants to do, IT has to provide the tools required.
Simon: To a certain extent we will know what the company has coming up, what projects are needed, so we can give it a little bit of thought. All of our projects are mapped out and planned before we even allocate them the due date.
We don’t tend to have specific IT projects Volume 22 – Issue 4 |December 2012 7
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