1. Novitech, the Solutions Provider

Novitech, together with its affiliates is a well-established systems integrator and software development group, present on the Slovak and IT market since 1990 when Mr. Attila Tóth, who is the president of the company, founded Novitech.

Novitech is a registered trademark in Czech and Slovak Republic.

The company group has a positive profit record for the past 13 years.

This is resulting from the following main success factors:

Stable business mission of the company focused to turnkey information systems solutions requiring perfect project management (based on Novitech Project System) and proper combination of wide range of IT professionals (hardware, networking, systems software, application development, training, field service, etc.). The group head-count in past years average is around 140 full-time and about 60 part-time specialists and small project-based subcontractor software groups.

• Permanent orientation to high value-added product and service offerings to key customers within the relatively small local market. These high value-added project opportunities are targeted to large-scale sophisticated project implementations (like the Slovak Tax Information systems or Slovak Gas customer information systems) and/or to projects offering new technology elements to the customers. (Intranets, process engineering, e-learning systems, etc.)
• Flexible customer service facilitated also by good geographical coverage of Novitech subsidiaries over Slovakia. There are 5 subsidiaries outside of the main company camp, which is located in the second largest city, Košice.
• Emphasis of the quality standards for Novitech services. The company belongs to a few Slovak IT companies certified according to the new ISO 9001:2001 process oriented standard.
• Result-oriented stimulation scheme of the employees and teams, proven and tuned during the 13 years operations of the company. This schema (called at Novitech as “linear motivation”) is the main guarantee of workforce dynamics generating the stable growths and profitability of the company by the employees themselves.
• Success oriented creative working atmosphere, Novitech is an equal opportunity employer as important part of the over-all company culture. Openness to international partnerships enabling permanent accesses to new technologies via such partnerships and/or joint ventures.

The combination of the above professional, technological, company size, geographical, and stimulation factors enable the company to differentiate its offerings from the average competition, mainly with respect to small companies (incomplete product or service offerings) but also from the big inefficiently managed local and international market players.

2. Our vision

In order to enforce Novitech‘s current stable position on the market, the company management is decided to initiate several interrelated innovation projects. The aggregated goal of these internal projects is to offer our clients a new dimension of information systems life cycle, internally called the p-Business, which stands for process oriented business information systems approach.

The p-Business approach is emerging form our significant market feedbacks:

1. The world trends: there are several business process re-engineering methodologies offered mainly with consulting companies, to customers for the transformation functional and organisation hierarchies (so called cost centers) into process oriented business structure. This new structure then enables to plan, measure the costs and to manage the business according to the processes and their activities. The discipline is known ABM -Activity based management.
2. From the customers’point of view, this discipline, however still remains on the level of strategic analysis and pilot projects without practical benefits to the bottom-line of their businesses. The main obstacles preventing full utilisation of the process oriented management methodologies and analytical tools have experiencienced at our customer sites as follows:
   • Customers have less experience and skills to define properly their business processes.
   • Even when they define the processes, on strategic level, there is no comprehensive roadmap and tool-set for converting the static business process charts to the everyday business, namely: to work-flows management, related software systems, cost controlling, incentive systems, etc.
   • The existing client software systems are not well structured according to business processes. They are still structured according to information processing activities mapped to the current architecture of computer operating systems, networks or some standard program packages.
   • Even in case of the existence of such a clear roadmap, there is still a human problem: the new company process maps should be fully understandable by their respective users and actors. Since in our changing world, these process maps are permanently changing, the users and actors will need permanent retraining, or learning on demand.
3. Despite the above mentioned client and technology constraints, there is a massive external pressure on the companies to manage the process phenomenon. One source comes from the standardisation bodies like ISO: current ISO certified companies have to be re-audited to the new process oriented ISO 9000:2001 standard. The other source is the market itself, better cost and added value management have direct impact on competitive product and service pricing.
4. We are convinced, the problems outlined above are not specific to Novitech customers only. This is a global critical problem of the IT business, too. If the IT industry can manage the quantum leap from “programming the computers only to programming the business processes”, this breakthrough solution can dramatically multiply the current yield of the companies from their business systems.

Novitech’s p-Business approach aims at an integrated solution of the above mentioned business process life-cycle illustrated on Fig. 1. The main process components of this cycle (we call it p-Business Ring) are as follows:

• Design the process map of your business, or improve it based on the feedback from the users
• Adjust your existing systems ( SW and/or decision making activities)
• Prepare user learning content for the corporateľlearning portal.
• Users learn the new or changed process map interactively via the Intranet. Access to the portal from mobile GSM and WAP devices should be also available in case of the emergency for employees out of the office.
• Updated by the learned content, users make their job with the maximum and latest available knowledge about the business. Managers can track process transparency and their activity parameters: cost, freuency, workload. These performance indicators can be integrated into a Balanced ScoreCard of the company for top management reviews.
• The Help Desk ( SW and personnel ) assists users in carrying on their jobs, and generates alerts about the latest process improvements
• The workflow engines care about the exact logistics of the activity flows execution in process domains, as defined in the process map. The workflow engines also maintain documentation of activity instances and their outputs.

Data needed for the given activity is brought to the user by workflow engine from the productive data processing systems and databases. New activity data outputs are stored in the productive systems.

Figure 1: The p-Business Ring

The above outlined ring contains two circles. The inner circle (corporateľIntranet) provides communication among the servers and user workstations. The outer circle drives the p-Business innovation processes within the company. The logistics of this innovation process is controlled by the so-called p-engine. The p-engine is a standard workflow engine, which drives the innovation process according to the p-Business innovation process map. Such a typical innovation process map is outlined in Fig. 2.

Figure-2: Sample of a p-Business innovation process map

In terms of the deliverables, the results of the p-Business approach innovation projects shall be as follows:

Service offerings:

• Practical guidelines how to build integrated p-Business Rings for different types of businesses
• Interactive Business process e-learning modules adjusted for use over the Internet/Intranet and classical training lessons based on customer choice
• Training and e-learning content how to design process map of your business
• Advisory and software integration services for adjusting client productive software systems to the company process map
• Implementation of the related software products

Product offerings:

• Software packages and tools for designing and documenting process maps. ( Offering with selected process software makers )
• Software package for workflow engines (Offering with selected workflow engine makers )
• Balanced ScoreCard packages
• Optional Help desk software and know-how
• Novitech’s e-learning portal software package
• Novitech’s mobile learning portal access software package

3. Can we manage to do it? - Yes.

The goals set forth are ambitious. To develop, maintain and to sell the p-Business Process Pack to customers satisfaction, which reuires excellent technology competence, straightforward project management .

Concerning technology competence aspects, the Novitech group has got skilled and coherent development and project management workforce for all core process components of the p-Business Ring. Furthermore, our teams are implementing several particular stand-alone components of the Ring to our existing clients. For example:

• Process maps: for Grafobal Skalica, US Steel Košice, and for the Novitech itself
• Learning portals: e-learning courses on information systems (a bachelor degree course), Activity-based management, Project management, Interactive English, etc. developed by Novitech Partner e-learning team
• Helpdesk: developed and operated for our largest client, the Slovak Tax Authority information system
• Mobile access to portals: WAP applications developed by Novitech WSW division for several GSM market segments as, Teleparking, CityGuide

During the development of these components, Novitech has established several active partnership agreements with market leaders of software product makers, for the standard components of the p-Business Ring, as: PR Finland for process maps, Staffware (U.K) for workflow engines, Intralearn (USA), for learning portals, Reach-U Solutions for mobile access and we maintain close technology partnership with global providers, as IBM , SAP and PSION, too.

Another important issue is the quality management of this sophisticated project. Novitech’s project and company management capabilities were successfully verified in the past in several large scale projects, like:

• INFOGAS Information System for Slovak Gas, 1993-97, 6M Euro, Novitech as systems integrator 
• Slovak Shipyard IS, 1994-1999, 4M Euro, as systems integrator 
• APV DIS: Slovak Tax Authority information system, 1994 -ongoing, as application software integrator and developer.

We believe, the Novitech management can safely host this new project, too. Despite above specified good pre-conditions, we plan to make several improvements:

• to restructure our company structure according to main market targets and competency groups
• to extend and improve our marketing and sales team, to be ready for introduction of our P-Business Ring pack onto new markets: Austria, Germany, Czech Republic and Hungary

Thus, the technology and management competence, partnership background and pilot clients are already in place. The task is to integrateľour existing partial applications into one functioning process ring.

The remaining open issue concerning the feasibility of the p-Business Ring project is the financing. Despite a stable earning record of the company for past 13 years, this project - including its introduction costs to the above mentioned new markets - cannot be financed only from the ongoing profits of the company. Detailed justification of the need and schedule for external funds is given in Chapter 5.

4. The p-Business Ring project implementation roadmap

In line with our long-term experience in managing large-scale projects and programmes, using our NPS (Novitech Project System), we have defined 6(six) substantial metrics for the p-Business Ring project:

One.
Client (market) reuirements specifications. - What shall be the functionality of the p-Business Pack?

Two.
Project work-break-down structure (WBS). - How and when the reuired functionality will be achieved ? In this project, WBS includes also market extension and pilot implementation subprojects

Three.
Resource Planning - What technical, manpower and infrastructure resources are needed and when ? Which WBS element to outsource, by subcontracting?

Four.
Budget and project cash-flow. - What is the cost and the schedule of funds needed?

Five.
Project SWOT Analysis - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks

Six.
Project Master Plan - milestones, outputs, success indicators and risk management scenarios. Return on investment estimates.

Within the scope of this executive summary, we present the most relevant info from the Master Plan only:

5. Project Resource Summary

From the long-term strategic planning point of view, the project will be implemented in two innovation stages. Stage 1 is to cover time span of 2002-2004 and is targeted to develop and market a general-purpose base version of the p-Business Pack. Stage 2, during 2004-2006 is to be focused to developing industry specific versions of p-Business Ring Packs.

Processed by:

Attila Tóth,
President
Novitech a.s.
November 5, 2002