Team meeting discussing Continuum, support for IFS Applications

Continuum

Continuous improvement for IFS Applications™

Are you ready for continuous improvement as a single service?

Modern business applications, especially the most powerful and functional ERP solutions, are often expensive to buy, expensive to implement and can be expensive to own. The counterbalance to all this cost is of course the opportunity for great improvements in operating efficiency, quality, risk reduction and customer service.

Building a high-performance operation upon the underpinnings of a modern ERP application is a journey that goes well beyond the initial implementation project and even beyond a ‘phase 2’ improvement initiative. In our experience, the best ERP users are learning and improving constantly. They create a virtuous circle, where new application features unlock or streamline new on-system processes. In turn these processes drive further improvements in the availability and quality of data which, themselves result in the business being able to unlock even more useful functionality.

Sometimes this improvement journey happens quickly while other times things slow down. Competing business priorities can get in the way and those competing priorities are the exact reason why a business needs to improve further.

What is Continuum?

At Baker Tilly, we recognize and embrace the desire for ‘always better’ and that’s why we are launching Continuous Improvement as a service under the Baker Tilly brand Continuum. Here’s what it is:

  • Continuum is a monthly fixed-fee subscription service that covers both application support and ongoing continuous improvement (CI) in your business
  • By combining support and CI we are able to see the real-life results of CI initiatives through reduced support needs in areas where improvements have been made. We are also perfect placed to support the adoption of new functionality and revised processes that might result from a CI change.
  • As part of Continuum, we will run your Continuous Improvement Board for you, facilitating the necessary meetings and workshops with your business representatives and helping you to devise solutions for improvements sought by the business.
  • We will obtain business approvals for changes and we will handle all of the admin and paperwork relating to your CI Board, leaving you to focus on your day job.
  • We will develop and deliver CI changes and then work with your business to test and implement them.

Contiuum is charged as a simple fixed monthly fee which includes a pre-agreed Improvements Fund to cover the development costs of ongoing changes. The size of the Improvements Fund essentially determines the rate of change within your business and this can be scaled up or down flexibly by you to reflect your operating realities.

With Continuum, you will benefit from a long-term alliance that will drive your business towards ‘always better’ with the minimum of admin, fuss or overhead. Continuum will create that all-important feedback loop between business operations and application support, locking in changes and moving the focus from ‘fixing’ to ‘improving’.