They work, they are cheap and they are efficient in addressing the business needs.
In my experience, they are at most two of these things. Most of the time, I see lots of businesses bend over backwards to mold their processes to match the tooling they use, or expend lots of manual labour because their business flow isn't modelled efficiently in their tooling. Impedance mismatch is the #1 factor why many business automation projects end up costing multiples of what they were initially intended to save.
These problems aren't limited to off-the-shelf solutions, it could take an experienced developer months to really learn the business process and model it efficiently. Most businesses don't allow for that in their software budget, so you get either:
- something that works, and is relatively cheap, because it was cobbled together by someone from the business (see: excel sheets, access applications or nowadays, Microsoft Flow)
- something that works and is efficient, because it was built by a team of developers in close cooperation with the business
- something that's cheap and efficient but doesn't work, because it was built by a fly-by-night developer on a shoestring budget.
The only cases where you can have all three is when the business was built around a single piece of well-designed software, the CTO and CEO have been very conscientious about following the capabilities of the software, and the software manufacturer never decided to completely overhaul their interface for "reasons".
In my experience, they are at most two of these things. Most of the time, I see lots of businesses bend over backwards to mold their processes to match the tooling they use, or expend lots of manual labour because their business flow isn't modelled efficiently in their tooling. Impedance mismatch is the #1 factor why many business automation projects end up costing multiples of what they were initially intended to save.
These problems aren't limited to off-the-shelf solutions, it could take an experienced developer months to really learn the business process and model it efficiently. Most businesses don't allow for that in their software budget, so you get either:
- something that works, and is relatively cheap, because it was cobbled together by someone from the business (see: excel sheets, access applications or nowadays, Microsoft Flow)
- something that works and is efficient, because it was built by a team of developers in close cooperation with the business
- something that's cheap and efficient but doesn't work, because it was built by a fly-by-night developer on a shoestring budget.
The only cases where you can have all three is when the business was built around a single piece of well-designed software, the CTO and CEO have been very conscientious about following the capabilities of the software, and the software manufacturer never decided to completely overhaul their interface for "reasons".