This article was written for BDO’s business briefing for Autumn 2003. The article is reflective of a common theme that we find – businesses often resort to writing software as a first resort rather than a last resort, and end up working even harder to make their business work. It’s not that I’m against homegrown software, but I do see it cause enough grief that I suggest clients have a Bex and a good lie down before developing their own software. The article is also published at http://michealaxelsen.com/blog/publications/articles/when-the-systems-tail-wags-the-organisations-dog/. Enjoy.
Software Selection
Blog posts on the topic of software selection.
Invitation to Present at Queensland CPA Congress
I have been kindly invited by CPA Australia to present at the Queensland CPA Congress in October 2006 on the topic ‘Implementing Systems for Improved Reporting Efficiency’. Since this has the potential to be drier than last week’s dog food, I am trying to ensure that the audience doesn’t go to sleep 5 minutes after I do through what will hopefully be an interesting presentation for most people.Â
This I will do by giving a comprehensive companion guide (that has all the boring details) to attendees, and focussing the presentation on a strategic approach to information systems implementing for reporting efficiency. This discussion will be livened up with some war stories from the field. Most of our clients do struggle with their reporting efficiency problems and these stories will be used to illustrate some of the issues we all cope with.
The official session guideline is:
Presentation Overview:Â Implementing Systems for Improved Reporting Efficiency
This presentation addresses issues in selecting and implementing information systems – including but not limited to accounting information systems – in order to ensure efficiency in business reporting.Â
A strategic framework to building your information systems is provided that can be used to assess your reporting efficiency and to suggest strategies that will improve your business’ response to this important commercial issue.
The presentation will include ‘case studies from the field’ in Micheal’s experience in addressing these issues for clients. All attendees will receive a comprehensive guide with detailed discussion on the approach to implementing systems to achieve improvements in reporting efficiency.
The presentation is set down for 25th October 2006 from 3.20pm to 4.20pm at the Sofitel Hotel in Brisbane. Hope to see CPA members at Congress this year.
Business and Open Source
I recently wrote an article for InTheBlack entitled “Open For Business”. IT discussed pros and cons of open source in a business context. I’ll dig out a link to it later, but one of the points I was making was around the level of activity of a certain project – that is, outside of the top two or three projects it is possible that an open source project may not be very supportable or supported. Apparently I’m not the only one that thinks like this, according to this ZDNet article: Open source Net support not enough for business.
Professional Services Firms and Technology
I have been working for professional service firms since 1997 (nearly 9 years!), and I recall sitting in a meeting with the national board of a former employer – a national accounting firm – in 1997 when the topic of email came up. Most didn’t understand it, most thought it could be an expensive exercise and ‘anyway, clients pick up the phones to talk to me, they don’t email me’. A reasonably rational response in 1997, but in 2006, particularly as Generation X and Y take over from the baby boomers, email is becoming a preferred medium of communication.
Email is still a particularly dangerous form of communication when communicating with clients – confusion can reign supreme and ambiguity can become the order of the day if you are not careful, and I now have a policy of making a phone call before sending an email for that reason (however, policies were made to be broken, I have found!). However, clients do expect email communications fairly instantaneously, which is why I found Ross Dawson’s Blog‘s entry on ‘The Seven Mega-Trends of Professional Services‘ particularly interesting. I can only concur with most of the comments made regarding professional services firms in terms of client sophistication, transparency, governance, commoditisation, and so on.
What is also interesting to me is that this is a white paper that Ross Dawson wrote for Epicor, which is business software we recently recommended to a client as a management system for a professional services firm. Much to my surprise, in many respects, given that it wasn’t a dedicated practice management system (like, say, Solution6/MYOB, APS, CMS Open, or Keystone), it met all our criteria (proven capability, functionality, low-risk) for the client in that circumstance.
Serendipity drives the world.
SAP: Just Look at me Now…
I have had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to take a look at what SAP calls its “MySAP All-in-One” solution. All-in-One is essentially the MySAP software combined with the skills, expertise and intellectual property of the business partner/software vendor (disclaimer: my firm, BDO Kendalls, sells, supports and implements the MySAP software, although I don’t personally benefit from the thing).
A few years ago I would have told my clients to run screaming in the other direction (or at least think very, very carefully before proceeding with any ERP, including SAP – particularly after the experience of the Queensland government with SAP). In fact, I once had a good hearty laugh when SAP tendered for a software solution I was advising on – the client’s budget didn’t cover Stage 1.
However, it would seem that the lesson has been learnt, and MySAP’s focus is on delivering business solutions in the context of the customisation required. Time was, a salesperson would glibly state, “yes, that’s possible, just do the customisation” – and somehow completely omitting the phrase “but I don’t know that that’s a particularly smart thing to do because it’s really expensive and adds bugs and makes upgrades difficult and…”.
Of course the difficulties were not always, I think, due to “good” salespeople. Some of my best friends are salespeople. Businesses at one time felt that it was worth the effort to change software to meet their business processes – but neglected to adjust the projected cost by the requisite risk factor.
At any rate, if you are an SME thinking about the possible benefits an ERP can bring, you could do far worse than check out MySAP All-in-One. It’s a rapidly shrinking market since Peoplesoft bought JD Edwards and Oracle bought Peoplesoft – but that’s the way of the world.