Businesses guard their capital expenditure budgets very carefully.  There are numerous controls to ensure that equipment is not bought frivolously. 

The risk is that the equipment is perceived as belonging to specific groups and we also get the ‘Not invented here’ situation leading to information duplication, and system overlaps.

What happens when one system indicates that the revenues are $3.1m and another indicates $3.2m is that people lose sight that the target was $4m.  Considerable energy is wasted trying to show why one systems answers are correct and the other incorrect.

Business Support

In deciding to search for polar bears, there is a considerable investment in capital expenditure and training.  What is actually required in for the equipment to be used for additional and complementary tasks, such as spotting ptarmigan or snow foxes during the season and for taking visitors onto the marshes during the summer. 

This has two beneficial outcomes:

The equipment becomes more a part of business as usual since others now see the benefits and then they in turn look for additional uses for the equipment.  Leading to a reduction in the number of different systems that have to be maintained, each with its own particular idiosyncrasies and training requirements, reduced operating costs and better use of expert knowledge.

For the Finance Department, the return on investment improves.

We look at the business requirements for information and see whether, with a little piece of work, that information can be derived from the data and systems that the Revenue Assurance and Fraud Management teams use on a daily basis.  This results in a better communication lines between the RA teams and the different parts of the Business.