The Power Of Less

November 5, 2009 from Forbes – “Minimalist design has been in vogue for decades. But when did we become enamored of the stripped-down business practice? When did business really start to leverage the power of less?

Google has led the way here. Remember the first time you landed on that spare, slightly dorky page, with just a multicolor logo and an empty box? We take it for granted now, but at the time it was revolutionary; every other search portal was competing to cram as many links, categories, ads and blinking gifs into 800x1200 pixels as it could…

But the art of less got a significant boost since economic conditions deteriorated, and less became the one thing we all had plenty of. In the best case scenarios, creative "power of less" responses to dramatic budget cuts have resulted in outcomes much better than the status quo, especially when technology was leveraged…”

180 View – When assisting organizations with software selection, the tendency for most organizations is to create a substantial list of requirements. We ask our clients to prioritize the requirements so as to just focus on the most important ones. We ask the vendors to just respond to the high priority items. It’s our way of doing more with less by nailing the most important requirements and not getting bogged down with less important requirements.

As well, when designing the to-be businss process, it's a good idea to keep it simple if possible. This is a huge challenge for organizations with multiple profit centres each with their own unique way of doing things. If the profit centres could share the same business processes, you also achieve more with less.

Epicor ERP project sparks customer lawsuit

May 18, 2009 from ComputerWorld – "...Epicor's representatives were given the Requirements list prior to entering any contract negotiations, and Epicor represented its product would be able to perform all of Ferazzoli's requirements," the complaint states...

In June 2007, Epicor officials visited Ferazzoli's headquarters to learn about the business and demonstrate its software. The officials made further assurances that Epicor's technology would be satisfactory, according to the complaint...”

180 View – There are many reasons for failed implementations, and we can’t speculate what happened here. However, we think the problem is not likely the software but more likely the selection and implementation process. In the article, a suggestion is made - "You want to make sure that all demos, marketing materials, and assurances are put into the (contract) document." We partly agree with this recommendation. But demo’s and assurances are too vague. Better would be to include specific requirements from an RFP to which the vendor responded.

Could the recession be good for enterprise software?

February 19, 2009 from InfoWorld – “The recession has companies worldwide scrambling to rein in technology costs with desperate vendors responding in turn, offering deep license discounts, providing low-cost financing and proclaiming ever more shrilly that their products in fact save customers money…”

180 View – It’s going to be a tough sell for companies to invest in technology if they have just been forced to lay off part of their work force. However, there are companies that will want to scale back their on-going IT costs. They may be able to do this by renegotiating terms with their vendor and in optimizing certain inefficient business processes. Another possibility is replacing a costly system. Costs of the existing system could be high based on annual maintenance fees calculated on the original license fee. Costs could also be high for the internal and external costs to support the system. And costs could be high if substantial work is required for upgrades. But be careful with replacement strategy as the internal costs to implement a new system can be very high too.

Top 10 software selection mistakes

December 2007 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “For many companies, replacing a system is like going to the dentist: necessary, but potentially painful. Often, you can stave off the need for replacement with preventive action such as upgrades. But if the system is no longer supported, or if there has been a change in the business that renders it inadequate, you have no choice but to go to market. And when you do, it’s easy to make big mistakes. Here are the biggest ones…”

Software Evaluation and Software Selection

December 17 from TEC – “It is daunting for corporate IT buyers to discern the true capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of a given enterprise application suite. Buyers’ project teams are inundated with marketing information from vendors struggling to differentiate themselves. Functional cross-over and software integration have caused product overlap and a lot of confusion in the market. Mergers and acquisitions are also creating problems, as companies cannibalize the competition to gain access to a client base or functionality, which may result in solution overlap or forced migration. As a result, organizations are surrounded by ambiguity when making their implementation decisions.

Evaluating and selecting enterprise software is a complex process characterized by both striking potential and dramatic risks. Executed properly, this process and its outcomes can deliver exceptional benefits. If executed poorly, however, the results can range from disappointing to devastating. Organizations that select the wrong hardware, middleware, or software will learn the hard way that the money they’ve lost is a result of inadequate vendor information and evaluation processes. Such losses are increasingly apparent within price-sensitive, small and medium enterprises, which require accurate IT information to be collected quickly and cost-effectively during the software evaluation process. Vendor’s hype, consultants’ conflicts of interest, user doubt, tediously long selection processes, and unclear decision rationale are some of the unfortunate watchwords for most selection processes.”

180 View – The article is clearly self serving to TEC in that they offer a potential solution to avoid the problems that they describe in the article. “TEC’s evaluation centers (online decision support tool) support the analysis and comparison of thousands of criteria on hundreds of vendor solutions that have been vetted by TEC’s analysts, using industry standards and benchmarks. Because vendors respond to TEC’s RFIs without a project in mind, the responses are more typical of their capabilities.” TEC also lets users “prioritize their needs in a manner that gives greater priority to criteria that are considered more important.”

You should know that TEC is in some ways a competitor of 180 Systems. We have not spoken to any of their customers about the usefulness of their services or used it ourselves. Our first impressions are that we find it hard to believe that they have vetted thousands of criteria on hundreds of vendors. Second we don’t think that the vendor’s responses will be more typical of their capabilities because they are responding to TEC's RFI. Rather, we think the vendor will be more forthright when respondong directly to a customer RFP if the questions are specific. The vendor must be honest or trust will be lost, and the decision in the end is mostly about trust. We also note that their priority system is at a very high level – for example financial systems rather than at a more detailed level, which we believe could lead to misleading results. Nevertheless, we recognize that TEC may have a useful role to play in a selection project even if it means that a potential client would use their services rather than the services of 180 Systems.

Lately we have been thinking that we should also provide a similar service to TEC based on our extensive knowledge base. We would like to hear from our readers about their experience with TEC and whether we should offer something similar.