Holistic Approach: why and how implementing this kind of vision

2022 is a very important year for vtenext: the reached goals are different, but being included by Gartner both within CRM and BPM magic quadrants, as one of the best solutions at international level made us really proud.

However, which is the feature that led vtenext to be included in both the quadrants? We will discover it together through this article.

The holistic approach

Holism finds its etymological origins from the Greek “holos” which means “the entirety, the whole thing”. The adjective holistic refers to an approach, a theory or a therapy, which considers each system or organism in its entirety, not only composed of single parts. The idea is that the whole thing is something more than the single elements, which compose it: the man is something more than the sum of his cells, organizations something more of each single business area.

Holism is opposed to reductionism, according to which the whole thing can be understood only by understanding before its single components.

The holistic approach can be applied in different areas, including health. Holistic therapies and medicines consider each aspect of the patient’s life: physical health, mental balance, spirituality, social and cultural relationships, etc.

In contrast with allopathic medicine, which focuses only on the problem explained by the patient, holistic medicine, as the traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, yoga, Ayurveda, physiotherapy, osteopathy, homeopathy, aromatherapy and shiatsu tries to recover the lost balance between mind and body, deeply interconnected and indivisible.

Holistic approach within the organization

As a human being, a company is also composed of different elements, which interact to create an effective and working system.

If we consider the Michael Porter Value Chain (1985), we understand that each business function is composed by a coordinated set of processes, that are coordinated and complementary phases and activities, which constitute the rings of a chain through which the organization produces value. The image shows an arrow, which contains different but connected elements, directed to reach the profit.

Thinking about an organization as a set of functional silos, which do not interact with each other, is a mistake, an organization works because it is composed of a set of interconnected processes.

Solve turnover problems only working on finding new leads could not bring to the desired goals. In fact, you could have a problem within different internal processes, which lead a customer from potential to purchaser. Maybe the customer is not receiving the answers he wants, or is experiencing delays in the product/service delivering, or having administrative problems. It is not enough to do marketing and sell: the whole company has to work to acquire and maintain customers, satisfied.

Holistic approach benefits

L’approccio olistico porta molteplici benefici alle aziende:

• remaining focused on what really matters and determine what is currently working and what does not
• understanding which business areas are weaker than the others, observing those from a wider point of view. In this way you will be able to individuate ineffective methods and dedicate more resources to the effective ones
• make the company working at its best possibilities, giving equal importance to each area and sharing a general goal to the whole company
• guaranteeing brand credibility and growth thanks to the design and communication coherence (as it happens in Apple, Nike and Nespresso)
• knowing deeply your customers in each market, observing it in its totality. In this way, it is possible to adapt communication, commercial proposals and product’s features to a specific target.

The holistic approach within software

Most of software used by companies enhances the separation in silos because:

• it acts on a problem trying to solve it without working on the possible problem’s trigger. Exactly as the allopathic medicine
• it creates more complexity
• the more problems manifest and the more are the vertical solutions that the company implements trying to solve it
• it creates difficulties for the collaborators: there are more and more systems to learn, databases to manage, email, phone calls and post-it to be able to communicate effectively. People are a bridge between different applicative, generating discomfort and a bigger economical effort.

A holistic approach within IT management, indeed, visualizes and treats an informatic system as a single entity.

vtenext, overtakes vertical software problems, combining the open source with processes and operating holistically. 

For this reason our solution has been included by Gartner both in BPM (Business Process Modelling) and CRM quadrants.

The combination between the open source approach, in which the code is always available, and the holistic one, makes vtenext a unique platform in its category.

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