How to choose large business software - spaghetti function

What a mess! The business systems in most large business are a spaghetti nightmare. These systems have grown like topsy – with many different solutions bolted together. Try to make a change – it’s like trying to construct a new motorway through the centre of London.

As the economic crisis unfolds, it is common sense that large companies will have to live with reduced sales, tighter cash flow and the need to streamline their costs in order to survive. IT can be the answer to most of those requirements.

As the economy gets more difficult to predict, large companies are trying to integrate disparate business systems together and at the same time simplify business processes. Huge savings can be made by making business systems more efficient – saving labour costs, improving cash-flow and providing management with up to date and accurate information. I dread to think how some boards have recently made these colossal business decisions which have hit the headlines - in many cases these decisions have been based on inaccurate and outdated information.

I recently held a masterclass for a major ERP developer’s customers – all FTSE 100 companies – on how they could streamline their systems and make them more efficient? The outcome was a complete stalemate, - they all saw the advantages of ‘Purchase-to-Pay’ and ‘Activity Based Costing’ etc. But none of them had the budget or inclination to take on the huge change process required to transform their business systems – it would affect too many other departments.

Technology – what is happening?

When you think that systems architecture is stabilising – it all changes again. Traditional in-house server-based technology is gradually being replaced by hosted software as a service (SaaS) technology. Instead of having to maintain and upgrade internal systems let a third-party do it for you. We have seen bureau systems – 20 years ago; facilities management – 10 years ago;
Application Service Provider (ASP) – 5 years ago and now SaaS. Yes they all have similar concepts but are in fact quite different.

The SaaS model is a charge per user per day rather than a capital charge – it provides a wide area network web-based solution with external hosted applications and data servers. The hosted data has been the stumbling block but gradually organisations are coming to terms with the model. We have seen the success of SalesForce.com and we are now starting to see other specialist applications start to appear.

For today’s decentralised corporations the concept of a web-based solution accessing central databanks has a lot going for it. SaaS can be deployed anywhere in the world without the need for local technical expertise, maintenance and support. Many of the leading ERP developers are offering SaaS models but the take-up has been slow so far. Beware of third parties that finance and manage the infrastructure with little or no track record – stick to proven suppliers.

Dennis Keeling is chief executive of Business Software Intelligence. He was previously one of the founders and CEO of software industry body BASDA

Finding help to change the business

So if it is so difficult to change existing systems what can be done? We went through a similar crisis in the early 1990’s when ‘Windows’ and ‘NT’ were just emerging. Corporate heads did not have the authority to instigate the huge change process necessary so they turned to third parties – consultants.

A new term emerged ‘Business Process Re-engineering’ and the largest firms created large teams of experts to help. They were very successful – they were independent and external to the organisation. Consultants could make sweeping recommendations for change that no department head could ever contemplate and more importantly – consultants can effectively manage and monitor the process of change.

Few corporate heads have the vision to instigate the changes that are necessary to unravel their spaghetti architecture; few could logically argue the return on investment of those changes to the organisation.Today there are significant savings to be made and ROI is at long last a meaningful measure. We are no longer treading uncharted territory with our business systems architecture. Many concepts are well proven and workable – it’s just the sheer scale of changing the organisation, to implement a new systems architecture and business processes, that is the problem.

All the major accounting firms still have IT change consultants. There are also specialist independent groups of consultants – like Knowledge Peers - http://www.knowledgepeers.com/ who provide online bespoke consultancy in most complex areas. There are the big traditional (and expensive) international consultancies like Gartner (gartner.com) and Forrester (forrester.com). For more specialist help try the Hackett Group (thehackettgroup.com) they have done a lot of work on redesigning business processes.

Time is of the essence. It’s no good instigating a 3 year project to rationalise business processes – the company may be dead by then. What is needed is a quick focused action plan that can be implemented within 6 months to highlight the areas of maximum impact.

Selecting a system

Corporates are hardly going to replace their existing legacy systems at the moment and install shiny new ERP systems – but they are scratching their heads about some of the specialist changes that they will have to make to their existing systems. The market today is for specialist add-ons that will integrate to existing legacy systems.

That is not to say that their existing legacy systems cannot provide these specialist add-ons – but very often that will mean upgrading their existing legacy systems – an impossible task just to get added specialist functionality.

ComputingMI lists over 2,000 business software products – but only about 100 are the established products we know. The vast majority of the other products are specialist products that bolt-on to existing legacy systems. Some are new start-ups; others have been quietly plodding away in the background for many years. Many are known to the legacy system providers as these smaller specialist companies provide the high-tech stuff that bolts on to their systems. Document management, business intelligence, customer relations management and professional services automation are the new bolt-on names not often found as standard in legacy ERP systems.

But where do they find these specialist products? You can Google the specialist feature that you are looking for – and you may get some interesting links – but the majority of the search results will show irrelevant listings. But here are however specialist web-sites for selecting business software:

• Accounting & Finance 365 (accountingandfinance365.com)
  An online exhibition of leading suppliers of corporate systems.
  

• Business Software Intelligence (softcomparison.info)
  A new site with a wide range of specialist software – it enables any 5 packages to be compared in detail –created by the author to fill a gap in the market.
  

• Evaluation Centre (evaluationcentre.com)