Blog articles - Project Gearbox.com

Business logic and software development - who wins?

As the size and complexity of projects increases, so does the need for formal processes which use software provided by a number of specialist companies. Excel just is not going to cut it, unfortunately.

These software companies (or vendors) each have their strengths and weaknesses, and varying methods of how they see a given process, which will align better with some projects and not so well with others. The need to understand what you need, and what each vendor is offering is crucial, but not always clearly understood. It should also be mentioned that some of the vendors have rather more weaknesses than strengths, and should possibly be avoided for at least some projects.

There are several factors at play with all the vendors, which we should all be aware of:
1. The vendors are software developers, not experts on your organisation`s required business logic
This means that they may struggle to understand what you want (need) that is different to their standard offering, and why.
It may also be that they realise that their software will not be a good fit for your requirements - but they may not always tell you this.

2. The vendors will - quite correctly - try to make a range of packaged software
At its best, this will allow a company to choose some, or all of the modules available, which should be based on the "best practice" versions of each module. At worst, it is a collection of empty boxes, waiting for the client to "customise" them - see point 3 below.
Each client company has its own unique organisation, processes, history, and way of working, so there will probably be a discussion for each module as to whether they will modify the software module to match their process, or modify their process to match the software.

3. The vendors often derive a lot of income from customising their "standard" software packages
Some vendors (we will not name names here) seem to have a policy of selling a product that "works straight out of the box" - but is in fact an empty box, or a broken box that cannot be used without significant software customisation. The vendors are of course happy to do this customisation for you - at a nice hourly rate.

So what do you do?

The better your organisation understands what processes they already have, and what additional processes they think they may need - BEFORE they start talking to the vendors - the more easy it will be to assess the many options that may be presented to you.
It is fine that you may want to "tweak" some of the standard software, but if you realise that you are going to have to pay for extensive customisation then your costs will rise, and you might want to consider looking at other vendors, or possibly reconsider how your processes should be.

You don`t have expert resources in-house to help you make these choices? Talk to us about it.