Omega’s nerve center under the microscope
MarketMaker is the core administrative system for the Omega group and plays a key role in ensuring efficient operations; a project group has now formed to assess and enhance the system to better fit our business model and work processes.
Project Manager, Henrik Gjellesvik (center) will, together with Karina Hovden Stava (l) and Karl Berge (r), investigate the potential of MarketMaker. Their goal is to make the system more robust and better equipped to support future growth, whilst also stimulating increased usage.
"The feedback we received after an audit with one of our major clients was that the main management system was professional, well-structured and deeply rooted in our organization," says Omega's HSE & Quality Manager, Karina Hovden Stava.
“Our client assessed that the demonstration and documentation we provided displayed a high level of internal supervision and quality. Their main observation was that we are consistently compliant with their requirements and have control over all parts of the framework agreement”.
Increased scope
Despite its immediate success, MarketMaker is currently under a microscope. In line with recent developments, acquisitions, establishment of subsidiaries, expansion into new areas of expertise and an increased presence worldwide, MarketMaker is set to adapt to a new reality.
"As the scope of operations grow, the demand for an increasingly robust system structure becomes more important. Our solutions must be good enough to handle the potential challenges that may arise for our various subsidiaries around the world," explains Omega's Business Support Manager, Sigmund Lunde.
"One of the challenges is to develop a governance model that guarantees that existing functionality will not fail when new features are added. We must have good procedures for processes for development, testing and implementation that secure stable operations and execution at all times," says Lunde.
An enhancement project
"This will be an extensive project that we believe will take 12-18 months to complete. Initially, we will concentrate on the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) part of the system, as we believe this is one of the areas with most potential. The ERP component supports administrative functions such as accounting, salaries, invoicing, payments, taxes, contracts, orders, timesheet accounting and reports," says Bjarne Henrik Gjellesvik, Project Manager for Omega IT-arkitekter.
"MarketMaker works well across several areas, but the growing complexity and need for customization means that we need to ensure that the system is ready for further adjustments and improvements," explains Gjellesvik.
Gjellsvik is joined by HSE & Quality Manager, Karina Hovden Stava, and Improve Coordinator, Karl Berge, in the project group.
Complex challenges
"The challenges we face are continuously increasing the complexity of the system. Many changes have been made based on the input of users and without thorough analysis of what the consequences of these changes may be," Gjellesvik points out.
"It is likely that there are some features that are no longer required, which we can remove. I believe we are missing an important process to support increasing growth, especially internationally. We also need to address the fact that the system is used differently in the different parts of the organization," Gjellesvik tells us.
Robust and equipped for growth
The group's main objective is to make MarketMaker more robust and better equipped to support future growth and increased usage.
"Our challenge is to identify and offer new and important functionality that provides effective support for Omega’s business units and business model. We want to locate weak spots in today’s solution and improve these to make the system more robust, remove features that are no longer of use, and introduce better controls for the future development of the system," says Project Manager, Gjellesvik.