• News
• Pressroom
• Pressreleases S&T Group

Market of information systems has activated again,
S&T CZ recorded a stable growth 15 percent

According to S&T CZ, the interest in corporate information systems will grow rapidly this year. “We see 15 percent steady growth in this year. While recent years brought significant decline with a just slight recovery in the last year, this year shows the steady growth. Tailor-made systems and custom applications for business decisions will be the main drivers of it,” says Jan Gabris, Business Solutions Manager in S&T CZ.

According to analysis of the system integrator S&Z CZ, companies realize long-term investments. While they invested mainly in systems with fast ROI in 2010, this year they return to investments ensuring them a long-term development. “Investing in information systems have been reduced or even frozen in the last three years because of financial crisis. They started revive in 2010 and are fully counted on in this year,” noted Jan Gabris.

Specialised solutions are the growth drivers

Specialised IT systems solving specific needs of customer business are now most demanded. Companies look for new options of cost reduction and want better use their existing IT systems. “Therefore they invest in specific projects and no all-purpose information systems. They want use their current infrastructure and valorise investments spent before. Cloud computing applications represent one way to it. Implementation is very fast, available throughput or number of users are better scalable and the firm does not need to change its hardware,” explains Jan Gabris.

The biggest growth record solutions for customer base development. “These IT systems help to find new customers, evaluate performance of sales forces or post-sale services. Managers get feedback using the IT. The aim is not only sales increase but also more efficient operations,” comments Jan Gabris.

TOP 5 applications with the highest long-term benefit for company’s IT   Source: S&T CZ   Applications supporting managerial decisions Development based on specific customer requirements Better quality level of individualised customer care Vertical solutions extending standard IS Virtualisation of computing

Cloud computing is not always the optimal solution
Although the cloud computing represents a strong trend today, it is not always the optimal choice for every company. Bigger companies do not like especially the anonymity of this service.

“Cloud computing is convenient mainly for smaller organisations. As it is an outsourced service companies may fully focus on their core business and not bother by an IT system maintenance. Of course, the issue is ‘anonymity’ of such solution. Suddenly there is no ‘IT crowd’ responsible for possible problems,” explains Jan Gabris. Therefore big firms better use virtualised solutions offering them advantages similar to the cloud computing but giving superior operation control and flexibility for IT system modifications.

At this moment a weakness of cloud computing is in applications themselves, as they are very limited. Special solutions, e.g. CRM and ERP systems, emerge quite slowly and their customisation is difficult.

Corporate systems aim to mobile devices

Implementations of information systems still more use advanced methods of access to information, also thanks to smart mobile phones that already became a standard part of corporate IT infrastructure. Mobile office applications and access to company databases are taken for granted. “Firms wish to exploit potential of mobile devices – smart phones, tablets, etc. Eventually they can access the corporate systems regardless the place where a person currently is. This all makes again the communication more effective and delivers more data for further decisions. A salesman can configure a product required by a customer during their meeting and simultaneously calculate its price and deliver date,” concludes Jan Gabris, Business Solutions Manager in S&T CZ.