Balmori Software Inc.

Do you have the notion that any software you obtain for your organization should be configurable to the exact way you like, to yield any report you care to specify, in any format that you care to dictate, now and forever, amen?

It's certainly possible to get that kind of software. But it'll cost you. And we're talking about much more than cash. Here's what you'll have to live with: high development costs, long development times, long debugging times, high complexity in day to day use, a high level of dependency on your in-house expert as well as your vendor, and complexity in turnover when your resident expert resigns.

An infinitely configurable application would by definition require a high degree of tailoring; and tailoring means programming. And in practice, programming means a salaried in-house "high priest" and lots of hand-holding from your vendor (with the accompanying annual or monthly maintenance contract).

Therefore, your insistence on infinite flexibility can in fact make you hostage to those who have the skills to deliver, or claim to be able to deliver, on that vision of infinite flexibility. If you're an SME, can you hack the costs - actual and implied?

But there is another way: off-the-shelf software. If the problem you're trying to solve is a common aspect of business operations (accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory control, billing, payroll, customer relations management, MIS, and such), the plain fact is that these are standard business processes for which off-the-shelf packages are available. In the hundreds.

"Ready-to-wear" software, assuming it is brought to market by competent people, is, by comparison, simple to set up and uncomplicated to use. Training for users takes less time; and the users themselves don't have to be computer experts, certainly not programmers. They can be the owners and the line people themselves.

RTW software is inexpensive because it is generic; it is not tailored specially for you; it is meant to be sold to thousands of SMEs.

To the innocent, that last is a negative; but in fact it is salvation for the SME. A generic, packaged application will typically have all the standard reports that you need; and only the anal-retentive or the obsessive could want anything much different. How different could your customer ledgers or sales book be from your competitor's, anyway? or from the accounting textbook examples?

A well-chosen off-the-shelf package frees you to grow your business; it doesn't sidetrack you into a parallel career of (unhappy) system administrator and (reluctant) software development project manager.

Elpidio Ibañez, Jr., President and COO of First Philippine Holdings Corp., tells the story of a Filipino exec who scored a stunning career coup. In December 2000, Dole Philippines' then-CFO Noel Casanova put his business unit, and his career, in the limelight by betting against conventional wisdom. Casanova and his team took what is generally considered an expensive, difficult-to-implement enterprise (ERP) application... and rolled it out in just four months.

This was unheard-of speed. How'd he do it?

He did it by decreeing that there be no modifications or customizations to the basic package. Casanova's four-month implementation time was a record-breaker, beating out all other Dole country units in the rest of the world. Ibañez of First Holdings capped his story: "It's when you go for customizations that you get into trouble. I've seen this happen many times."

At around the same time as the Dole Phils. feat, medium-sized companies Stateside were similarly waking up to the realization that off-the-shelf solutions are the way to go. - rsr

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