Kelly Kutz, Director of IT,
Life Data Labs
DOING MORE
WITH LESS
GETTING WORLD-CLASS SOFTWARE AND SUPPORT—WITHOUT A BIG STAFF OR BUDGET
BY KAREN J. BANNAN
hen you’re responsible for a global production and
distribution chain that moves products to six of the
seven continents, you might expect to have a lot of
IT resources at your fingertips. But Life Data Labs,
which produces equestrian food and nutritional supplements,
has found that it can manage very well with a one-person IT
staff—and the right software.
REX RYS TED T
The company is among an increasing number of businesses
that are tapping technology that’s been perceived as a solution
only for the large enterprise. There’s a good reason for that
new interest, says Mark Johnson, vice president of applications
product marketing, Oracle. Vendors such as Oracle have the
experience and capabilities to bring enterprise-level technology
to midsize businesses. “We have hundreds if not thousands of
customers who have successfully deployed Oracle products on
a limited budget over a short time frame—they don’t necessarily
have big IT staffs to support the software. These are companies
that have two or fewer full-time IT employees,” says Johnson.
“We are constantly demonstrating the ease of ownership that is
part of Oracle’s solutions.”
HIT-OR-MISS CRM
Life Data Labs is a beneficiary of such services. Prior to 2005,
the company kept track of its sales and inventory via an
outdated, patched-together web of about a dozen enterprise
resource planning (ERP) modules. Not surprisingly, it had
gaping functionality holes. The company didn’t have an
automated customer relationship management (CRM) solution,
and its manufacturing system didn’t do everything the company
needed. All of the finished products came off the production
line, which was computerized and automated, but each product
still had to be manually recorded.
