A Consultant's View
Prairie Trail Software, Inc. ..................................................... March 2005
Sometimes, buying software is harmful to your business. There are accounts after accounts where a business went bankrupt or nearly folded after buying new software. In their ignorance, top management went out and bought the wrong stuff! They didn't know what software really is and they suffered the terrible effects.
Let's start with what in the world "software" really is. It is not just the stuff that runs the computers. In today's world, computers are the nervous system for any business. How those computers operate determines how the business will operate. In short, software is the distillation of management goals, processes, and procedures into the business operation. Software is the means by which management gets done. A mismatch between the management of a company and the software will greatly damage the business.
When a company buys a new software package, that company will go through a transformation. We see that most clearly when we run into a clerk struggling with a new computer system trying to find what next to press and what to enter. But that is not the real transformation of the business. It is in the "back office" where the real transformation happens.
Why is that? In today's business, management is done through computers. Even small businesses are using computers to collect time data and bill customers. Changing software changes what is measured and the processes used to control the business.
What if there is a large mismatch between how a business was running prior to the purchase and how the new computer system says things are supposed to be done now? The business can grind to a halt.
Recently, the Dallas Jail system installed a new computer system. Talk about a mismatch that affected people! Judges have been complaining that they can't find out who was arrested in the last 24 hours. People have been waiting around for days for their loved ones to be "found" in the jail system so that they can be bailed out. The whole incarcerating mess is due to a large mismatch.
Part of the mismatch often arises due to not knowing before hand what the important measurements of system performance are. In any system, there are important measures of how well the system is operating. In the case of the jail, clearly one measure is how quickly a judge can find out who is being held. Yet, the people buying the system didn't consider that measure. When managers buying a computer system do not know what important numbers described what they were doing prior to installing a new system, they won't know if that new system will help or harm their business.
The point is: before buying new software, make sure that you know what your business is doing (or where in your business you are missing information) and make sure that the new software will give you a better view into your business. Once you know what you need and you know that the software will give it to you, it is much easier to make a profitable decision on buying software.
Wired broke the story of a church in Monterrey Mexico. "It was the reporters who noticed first. Unable to call their editors while covering the weddings of the rich and famous, they asked the priest why their cell phones never worked at Sacred Heart. His reply: Israeli counterintelligence. In four Monterrey churches, Israeli-made cell phone jammers the size of paperback books have been tucked unobtrusively among paintings of the Madonna and statues of the saints."
Such a technique is illegal in this country, but still, it is spreading. The illegal cell phone jammers have been selling like hot cakes on the streets of New York City. People are getting fed up with rude people who are not turning off their cell phones in church services, concerts, and other places. There are stories of people taking phone calls in the middle of movies. People are fighting back by even using such illegal methods as jamming the cell phone signals.
The price for these jammers is really quite reasonable. One place had them for less than $300. To top it off, the unit was designed to look like a cell phone so that it could be placed on the table in full sight and nobody would realize that it was the source of no rings.
The problem is international. Other countries have legalized the jammers but make the purchaser be licensed. Still others have considered the jammers but decided that since their police are using cell phones, allowing the jammers would affect public safety. The best uses identified so far are: prisons where inmates are not supposed to have cell phones to begin with, schools to cut down on the use of cell phones to cheat during tests, and banks in high crime areas that use them to prevent robbers from communicating with each other.
A user called technical support because his computer had frozen up. He had been typing for an hour or more but now, the wireless mouse wouldn't move. The problem was still there after rebooting. When the technician looked the system over, he noticed that the mouse didn't have any lights on. The mouse was not the Energizer bunny - the batteries had gone dead.
Dave Randolph,
President, Prairie Trail Software