These days, all big companies — and most medium-sized companies — are software companies. By this I mean that the company’s software (particularly custom software they’ve made) and associated data is integral to the success of their business.
And:
The fact that every company is a software company has implications. The most important is that software is something companies have to understand. A company can’t hope to just outsource its computing operations and that way the managers not have to deal with or understand it.
I've said this since the dawn of outsourcing. IT is not just a golem to stave off manual work, it can and should be something that differentiates you from your competitors. Embrace bespoke stuff, it gives you an edge. Don't just look at cost savings, look at revenue generation and retention.
As Thomas J Watson famously said all those years ago: "Fucking think, you cunt."
5 comments:
Bang on the money.
I once helped a massive company build a new CRM system. They'd had two disastrous previous attempts at replacing their original home grown effort with COTS packages (even buying the company in one case).
Quote: "You just put the package in don't you?" Missing completely that "CRM" was everything that they where to customers and that it was that essential thing, being them, that differentiated them from every other supplier. Being a standard "other supplier" all running Sibele or SalesLogix or MS-CRM was to give away all competitive advantage.
I managed to talk a building society out of repeating that pattern. So that's something.
Bespoke stuff gives you an edge?
I don't think so.
Bespoke stuff gives you an everlasting support nightmare.
Of course, it gives the IT guys who put it in a job for life, but from the business point of view that ain't so great.
Avoid bespoke stuff LIKE THE PLAGUE. Buy a package, DON'T customise it, and change your business methods to fit it.
Then you might still be in business, with reasonable overheads, in ten years' time.
Bespoke software is a siren. Ignore it. Tie yourself to the mast, do whatever you have to, but DON'T go down that road.
Bespoke stuff gives you an edge?
I don't think so.
Bespoke stuff gives you an everlasting support nightmare.
You work in IT, don't you?
Bespoke stuff gives you an edge in supporting your customers the way the business wants them to be supported. Implementing a package means you give your customers a great big "fuck you" while you make your own life easier.
Making IT's life easier doesn't do anything to make a company better.
Lazy cunt.
Yes I do work in IT and no I am not a lazy whatsit.
I've spent years cobbling up bespoke systems to sort-of keep on working when the fundamentals changed and basically if you take an old system and add money, you get an expensive old system.
And you keep on doing that for ages and ages because you've "invested" so much in it already.
And it never really works right. Or it only works with Netware. Or it's a Paradox database (remember them?) Or some other weird and wonderful thing that nobody's heard of any more.
But you have to keep trying because it's your employer's system and the ONLY one that will work with your business. Allegedly.
I stick by my point.
Throw it away. Get what's on the shelf, supported (preferably) by a big reputable outfit that won't disappear overnight.
Then, concentrate your effort on running your business, not on patching up some bag of bolts that was invented twenty years ago by a sandwich student.
(Disclaimer - all the examples used are real ones that I've had to cope with)
And it never really works right.
Not only lazy, but useless as well. :o)
Forget it. I've been on both sides of the fence, and forcing a company to a) convert their business process to suit the package and b) leave it at the vendor's behest is a recipe for long-term business suicide.
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