As your business grows, you are going to amass significant quantities of information. It’s crucial that those different information systems communicate with each other and are organised in a way that makes it easy to understand the past, present, and future state of your business.

This can be achieved by customising information systems in order to adhere to a set of principles that will elevate and answer to business needs. The principle behind information systems is to develop a way for users of that system – the employees within your business – to find the right information at the right time, thereby reducing the amount of effort spent on reporting. Most information systems today can be automated, which makes it additionally easier for companies to be aware of what’s happening with their business at any given moment.

Here’s a few reasons why customising information systems can lead to a stronger business.

What is an information system?

An information system is the overall integration of multiple different elements that form the backbone of a business. This includes things such as transaction processing equipment, servers, data management software, your employees, and the procedures that govern them. As businesses grow, the existing information system that they previously had, whether it’s one man with a notepad or a bank of computers running complex BI software, needs to adapt to the current state of the business. This is in order to deliver the most capable view of the organisation.

There is no one aspect of an information system that can be omitted. The six core components – hardware, software, data, procedures, people, and the internet – are all critical to create a fully functional and stable system.

Setting up a custom information system

Identify business needs

What tends to happen with businesses is that the rapid escalation of need, especially for smaller businesses who take off very quickly, means that these markers are overlooked, and there is no fuller exploration of what the current state of the business is. By setting out to customise your information systems, you will need this information, which means that if you haven’t done so yet, it’s time to start looking inwards.

Look at your employees, your customers, your industry, and your partners and take stock. This will help you define the context in which your system will operate.

Determine ideal components

An information system is comprised of several different elements, and as a result, those elements need to work together in order to create the system structure. While this seems simple on paper, it’s vital to understand that any miscommunication between hardware, software, data, people, procedure, or the internet, means that problems will occur further down the line.

Part of customising a robust information system means selecting the components that make it up strategically.

This all ties into business goals.

Some factors to consider:

• Do you want your system to scale easily, or is it a temporary solution?
• Are you pivoting to a more high-level operation, and do you need stricter security measures as a result?
• How skilled are your existing employees at understanding and elaborating within the system you have at the moment?
• Is there any information that is siloed and inaccessible to the larger organisation?
• Is your hardware compatible with the programmes you wish to run?

Additionally, keep workflows in mind. While it’s always better to update your systems, you may find that the newer system may require some adjustment, and it is better to have planned for it.

Undergo stringent live testing

As with any new system, it’s best to stress test it to ensure that the best possible outcome is achieved. With an information system, this is even more crucial as all its separate components need to work together in order to function as intended.

Benefits of a custom information system

Tangible goals and clearly identified business needs

Understanding these elements of your business means you can then define the scope, requirements, and scale of the information system that you require, what you need it to deliver, and which aspects of the business can be automated, if any. This will save you time and money in the long run, and help you iron out any issues in the way your business works, whether they’ve cropped up yet or not, as well as show you any places where you can boost your business operations significantly through restructuring, automation, or simply elaborating on what you’re working on.

Built-in compatibility

While most of our technology tends to work well together, there can be some outliers within the field, and it’s hard to identify which they are unless there’s an error code. By creating a custom information system, every component is chosen deliberately to work well within the overall landscape, and therefore lead to less issues or significant periods of downtime when one component changes.

A good case-study to keep in mind is the recent decision in Japan to finally pivot away from using floppy disks. The existing information system – which includes floppy disks as a method of backing up data – is no longer in line with the current reality of many businesses, and as a result has led to a widespread change.

Disaster preparedness

Customising your information system requires a step back in the process to make sure that everything is working as planned, which means undergoing rigorous live testing to ensure that the system is communicating as it is meant to.

This gives you the opportunity to ensure that you are prepared for any eventuality, any miscommunication, and any risk to your system. Regardless of which system you choose, undertaking the process of testing your system prior means that there is likely to be fewer problems arising to your consumers.

Maintaining pace with new innovations

It can be easy to put off upgrading your systems until your business has reached a certain level of growth, but once you have, a customised information system is critical to building a strong operation. As a result, customising your information system means that you are going to have a product that not only allows you to work better, but makes it easier to keep pace with future updated systems.

A product made specifically for you

It’s an unfortunate fact that many out-of-the-box solutions are not made with specific business requirements in mind. Customising your information system can therefore be a more economical approach, allowing you to develop a product that will actually answer the business questions you have.

Is customising an information system expensive?

While it can be significantly more expensive, the outcome is far better for growing businesses. It’s also worth noting that, sooner or later, you may still need to customise your information system, and therefore it might be better to approach customisation early.

What we will also state is that it requires the overview of so many systems that we would encourage the use of a professional – someone who really understands you and your business – in order to make sure that the system works as intended.

If you need any help upgrading or changing your existing information system into a custom one, reach out: we’re always happy to help!