HARD facts on SOFTware – A fresh look at “Fast – Cheap – Good”

Feb. 10, 2011 - PRLog -- Brought to you by Immo Böhm from Afresh Consult.  
www.afreshconsult.com
info@afreshconsult.com

It looks like its never going to stop raining. What a pleasure. We already have more than half of our yearly average rainfall at our house, and we have had more rain now than in the whole of the last season. It looks like I need to mow the lawn every second day. It feels like I have never seen the hills around Windhoek so green. The papers are full of people trying to drive through flooding rivers rather than to go around a few blocks to find a bridge. Idiots. But also I’d like to commend those that try to help rescue those idiots. Putting their own life and Bakkie in danger in the process.

But just like impatient drivers wanting to take shortcuts and ending up in the ditch – or worse – so it is with impatient companies trying to implement an ERP system on the quick. I read last year a very obvious formula – brilliantly stated, and this formula holds for any project: “Fast – Cheap – Good”. You can have any two of the three. So you can have a good project fast, but it is not going to be cheap since you need expensive consultants to do most of the work. You can do a lot of the work yourself, but then your project is not going to be fast, might be cheaper though. If you don’t care about quality and rush the project, it might be fast and cheap – since you are skimping on expensive consultants, but it will definitely not be good.

Think about how this formula applies to everything in life.

What concerns us, and the ERP systems we implement, is that we obviously don’t like cheap and fast and no good. I read last year as well someone saying that the “The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a deadline is forgotten”. And this is very true. But to balance quality with speed is a very tricky thing for our project managers to do, especially because our customers also have to work hard to make the project work. We find that those customers that work hard and have the right leadership in place easily finish our projects – at high quality – well below budget. Those that don’t typically struggle to keep costs within budget.

So management and leadership greatly affects the Total Cost of ownership of a system, my fifth most important factor to consider when buying a new business system. Management and Leadership is the most important factor affecting TCO in my mind, and our figures prove it. Now obviously not all software systems are the same, and you should select one that is easy to learn and easy to use, then it is also easier for management to lead their team through the implementation. The easier the new software is to use, the smaller the learning curve needs to be and thus the less anxiety felt by your team. This means that your team is more eager to jump in and get to grips with the new system they have to learn.

So yes, look at the license prices, look at the hardware requirements, look at the different software packages that some vendors glue together to make a system where others might offer a single integrated system, look at the cost of the consultants and the cost of the operating system and network requirements; these are all important, BUT – make sure that you invest in a business system – a fully integrated business platform – that is easy to use and adapt – not only in a sales demo – but in practice, and then consider the cost of training, pain, resistance to change and motivation of your team.

Well, this concludes my five most important factors to consider when choosing a business system. Ensure you have these five covered and your business will have a decent platform to grow on.
And remember – keep it (A)fresh.

About the writer: Immo Böhm

Immo Böhm is the founder and managing director of Afresh Consult.  He has been involved with business management systems for many years.  He is an experienced implementation and process design consultant and has done in excess of 60 projects in this regard.   Immo has a B.Sc degree, a diploma in IT and a MBA (UK).

# # #

Afresh Consult is an official partner of HansaWorld Business Solutions in many anglophone African Countries, offering Implementation, Development and support of the range of fully integrated HansaWorld ERP, CRM, SCM and accounting software.