In Search of Simple Business Applications

My company is currently developing a very simple, easy to use software package which we hope will enable companies to communicate more easily internally. It will cost very little and be VERY user-friendly.

I mention this, not in the hope of selling it to you, but to highlight a problem. Our market research has identified that a number of major corporations and government agencies could really benefit from this little package, but probably won’t ever take it up. Their IT management say that they already have similar functionality built into their ERP and therefore don’t need it.


The Problem with ERPs

The problem comes from the fact that, while IT management might be theoretically correct, the majority of users within the organisation avoid much of their ERP’s functionality..... because it is too complex.

For me, the term ‘ERP’ always conjures up a picture of a large, amorphous, elephantine suite of applications functions which are very cleverly integrated but too complex – and expensive - to implement properly. And, once installed and the price paid, it then becomes too difficult to justify taking on anything else which might in any way compete with what the ERP offers. ERPs also tend to be expensive and slow to enhance, so meeting the changing needs of users becomes that much more difficult.

Consequently, many users are turned off by the complexity of the ERP. They only use the bare essentials of the ERP’s functionality – enough to meet the corporate requirements of the organisation, but avoiding using other parts of the system as much as possible.

The irony is that the concept behind an ERP is that it should be able to model all, or at least a major part of, the corporate operation. Different functions can be integrated within the ERP, so that data and data processing redundancy can be avoided. Yet I suspect that users miss out on a lot of the benefits because of the complexity problem.

The alternative to the ERP, the “Best of Breed” approach, often simply means selecting a number of different, smaller, ERPs, each servicing a smaller part of the organisation’s functions. And bringing these together can keep the IT group busy for many years, and ultimately results in a bigger, even nastier, overall ‘ERP’!


The Alternative

These days users have PCs with email, word processing, spreadsheeting and other stand-alone applications provided. These applications are designed to be easy to use, and they do not require the discipline which is called for with an ERP. It’s much easier to use these facilities in their daily work than using the comparatively pedantic processes offered by the ERP. So the staff, being human, will inevitable opt to use their PC applications rather than the ERP whenever possible.

My premise is that it’s time for large corporations to come to terms with the reality of smaller applications, following the model which is now popular with PC users. Of course it is necessary to retain large corporate systems to process the organisation’s mainstream production and accounting tasks, but we should draw the line there. Give users smaller, independent PC- and Server-based systems to carry out the other tasks within the company.

This may seem to some to be a rather luddite-style approach, going back to the simpler applications concepts which were popular in the pre-online data base days. In some ways this may be true, but the computing environment has changed so much of late that a rethink is surely appropriate and desirable.

One could object that simplifying the computing environment and having more stand-alone applications will almost certainly result in some data and processing redundancy. My response is that, in return, it will free up a lot of staff time which is currently spent in dealing with the complexities of the ERP. On balance, I believe, users will actually become more efficient.

So my call today is simple. It’s time to simplify our business applications, take advantage of the greater flexibility which technology now provides, and make it easier for users (ie staff) to do their work.