We experience a paradox in the business systems industry. Most of the suppliers insist in recommending integrated solutions, whose price (usually very big) would be justified by the theoretical increase of work productivity. During this time, clients are complaining that their investments in the systems are not only unjustified by the productivity increase, but rather this “increase” is often negative.

The biggest shortcoming of these systems comes from the mere principle they’re built upon, naming the “complete solution”. The more “complete” a system gets – including sales, finance, payroll, operations, logistics, document management and so on, the less chance we have that the system may fit the company’s profile. And so we have a lot of productivity losses, from that productivity that is so praised when somebody’s selling an integrating system.

Every company has its own know-how and culture, in many cases these contributing to its success. Altering them just because a business system is just a bit “different” involves a lot of risks. We have the experience of a lot of companies or departments whose productivity was drastically decreased by implementing a “complicated” and expensive system. We helped customers who had the same problems we are sure you also have – “How comes I could do my job in 5 minutes and with 3 clicks in Excel and now I need half an hour and 15 clicks to do the same job? And this software costs a lot of money!” An how comes that if any error occurs, the system is perfect and we are the ones to blame for not using it right?”

Which bring us to the second shortcoming, namely the lack of understanding these systems have for the human nature. People make mistakes – it’s why we say that only the one who doesn’t work doesn’t make mistakes. If the system is complex, one mistake is duplicated in many places and affects many persons, in the same time being hard to find and remove. Should we do something so people won’t make any mistakes? Now that’s a nice goal. If you succeeded than an integrated system is ideal and will worth your money. If not, please read forward.

Why do system suppliers persist in this paradox? I think you already know the answer… Why sell a simple system at a small price when they may sell a complicated system at a big price? Especially since they could always say that the system is a good one and the productivity decrease appears because of system misuse and human errors. That’s easy than creating a system that copes with human error.

What if we would tell you that we can escape this paradox?

What if we would tell you that there is a possibility to gain all the benefits of an ERP without having to alter your organization to cope with the system and in such a way that human errors are solved quickly and without severe consequences? And all these by spending less money, and not more.

The escape from the paradox begins with the awareness of the two shortcomings mentioned above. If you consider that your organization 1) does not have its own culture, different from your competition and 2) has perfect employees, who do not or rarely make mistakes, then stop right here! This means that you don’t need us. Or rather (and we would bet on this option), you don’t need us YET.

We recommend you to change the very principle of business systems architecture. Instead of a big and heavy monolith – an ERP – let’s put several systems, each covering a smaller area, but in full compliance with the organization’s culture. People will appreciate a system that “knows” how things are getting done in the department and will make fewer mistakes. And you will have the same degree of integration and productivity promised by the integrated systems by using… INTERFACES. The amounts required for simple (and useful) systems and the required interfaces will be a small fraction of the costs required by an integrated system.