Dr Kate Andrews suggested I take a look at the online business journal “Ivey Business Journal”. This is the online version of a 70-year old journal.
I note that the May/June 2005 edition carries an article “The Strategic Management Process In E-Business“. This article provides several case studies from a scientific study of SME’s that have adopted e-business, and those strategies that SME’s can use to be effective with e-business.
Voice Over IP Solutions seem to be maturing. This article from Technology & Business at ZDNet reviews some handsets providing VOIP capability, and almost gets one thinking about such things. Unless you have a real need, I am not convinced that the technology is mature enough just yet to recommend wholesale adoption by clients, although for clients with specific requirements and expertise it may be a good solution.
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.
Blogging seems to have all grown up, gotten serious, and become a business tool if BRW is this week (27/05/2005) reporting on business blogging and its effect on modern marketing.
Apparently it is the saviour of marketing (according to a marketing person), which will only be the case when marketing understands how it works and what the message really is.
So far this year I have been to see several clients to review their approach to information systems. Almost all have struggled with the in-house development of software – in many cases a lot of effort has been put into developing in-house software, and although it must have sounded like a good idea at the time, they have come to regret it eventually.
In my humble opinion (and I haven’t really researched this one too much yet) there are usually several factors that end up ensuring that it all turns to tears:
For my clients, I often say to have a Bex and a good lie down before you embark on an internal software development project. And if it still sounds like a good idea tomorrow morning, then you should see your GP (because those symptoms are still persisting).
It’s not that all in-house software development goes to hell in a handbasket, but it is awfully difficult to do internal software development well on any large scale, and to have the discipline and the methodologies available is often beyond the capacity of a lot of my clients here. If you ever do think about writing substantial amounts of bespoke software, be sure to recognise the risks that come with that approach.
I am beginning to wonder if you aren’t better off adapting sometimes an open-source solution that does 80% of what you need for a small commitment of work (and my presentation on Tuesday night, again, talked about some of the issues you might come across there).
Hmm. I suggest I’ll need to write an article on this topic one of these days. Although, maybe I just did that.