BUSINESS SERVICES
Work, like life, is biological at root: Devote all your energy to rudimentary functions and you won't grow.
Outtask is the most cost-effective of several application service providers that offer flat-fee access to a suite of high-end business apps over the Net. The price depends on which apps you choose and how many people use them. CEO Tom DePasquale estimates $1,515 per employee per month - including setup cost and online training - for 100 seats of VIN.net Travel & Expense, PeopleTask Human Resources, and myouttask (email, voicemail, conference calling, and a group calendar), 20 seats of Siebel Sales, and five seats of Great Plains Financials.
Integration among disparate apps is a hallmark of the ASP approach. For instance, if an employee profile is updated in the human resources program, the data flows automatically to the accounting and travel booking programs. Most programs come in wired, wireless, and unconnected versions, with text-only modes in case you need to log on through a slow modem. Utilities are available to synchronize desktops with laptops.
There's just one hitch: Your ISP rules the office. "If you're running half your company over the Net, you need to be connected every minute of every day," says Bruce Merrifield Jr. of Merrifield Consulting Group, an ebusiness consultancy. "The infrastructure isn't there yet. This kind of service isn't on the leading edge - it's ahead of the leading edge."
Still, businesses ignore opportunities to outsource at their peril, says Christopher Meyer, director of Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation. Services like Outtask, he says, have arisen to fulfill the demands of the business environment just as autonomic functions evolved in higher organisms.
"Imagine trying to write a novel if you had to consciously make your heart beat," he says. "The more you can make lower-level functions operate autonomously, the more attention you can pay to higher-value agendas." That is, by conserving a company's most precious resource - attention - an ASP can give fledgling companies an advantage in the struggle for survival.
- Amanda Griscom (agriscom@thenewgreen.com)
Outtask: www.outtask.com.
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The Autonomic Office
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