The Perfect Business Application

I had an interesting conversation with a management consultant a few weeks ago that is still playing on my mind even today, hence the blog. He was describing Encanvas to his customers. He said that it was an excellent way of rapidly developing an interim information management platform until the customer found the perfect solution. Boy that bugged me.

I had to ask myself, what is a perfect business application?

Ask most IT people even today and they would probably point towards shrink-wrapped software solutions as being the closest thing we have to perfect solutions out of the box. These pre-templated solutions are meant to be ‘plug-in-able’ and instantly improve the way that people work – because the software vendor knows best. Of course, this ignores the fact that most of the end users of any system have more experience of how they do what they do than ANY software house could ever hope to develop. What arrogance! The best people to scope a system must surely be the practitioners that work in the discipline the software is designed to support.

To my mind most corporations have still to come out from the other side of a 50 year love affair with the idea of shrink-wrapped software solutions. This has resulted in the biggest IT hang-over ever. Many corporations have been left with more than 50 software supplier relationships and IT infrastructures that look like my worst bolognaise.

Most shrink-wrapped business applications involve data, databases, reports, charts, numerics, query and search, visualization, workflow and a hefty amount of business logic. These core building blocks have recently been enriched with geo-spatial information management and of course mobility features. Whilst these building blocks are consistently present across the majority of business applications, corporations still buy software applications ‘shrink-wrapped’ from different vendors for every business process they want to automate.

It's a sad fact that almost 30% of the cost of any business application goes into integration with other systems. It's also likely that less than 60% of the capabilities found in applications ever gets used. And any businessman knows that many vendors appear to think that the data they hold in the database you bought from them somehow becomes their property!

What will it take for business leaders to revisit the merits of the truly bizarre love affair they have with shrink wrapped software?

The answer is simple. They have to have a realistic alternative. That’s where Encanvas comes in. Yes, Encanvas is probably the fastest way there has ever been to build a database centric business application. And there is no doubting the fact that the benefit of working across-the-desk with users is the surest way of guaranteeing the end-system is a perfect fit for users. But more than this, Encanvas is corporate ready, and that means that it passes all of the essential security, scalability, resilience, accessibility and IT hygiene parameters that corporations must insist upon in order to secure business continuity.

So I come back to my original premise – what is a perfect application?

I think a perfect application is one that works in a way that users want it to work, that provides the information that people need at the right place, right time etc. and that delivers economies by removing tasks that can be automated. It doesn’t need to cost a fortune to create a perfect application – Encanvas proves that – but what it does need is for IT people and business people to work together and take accountability for delivering 'outcomes', not 'contributions'. Once we tackle these human issues, mastering the technology becomes a cake-walk.

Back in the saddle

I confess, I've not had time to look at my blog page for a number of weeks due to the number of plates we're all currently keeping in the air at NDMC. It's been a busy time organising the new offices, keeping the consulting projects rolling in and helping to establish Encanvas SA. Glad to see Anthony and the guys are really finding their feet now with Encanvas and closing their first deals.

Promise to spend a bit more time in July blogging and catching up with what's been going on with my family whilst I've been chained to the desk.

Is that.. 'sky' outside? Has it been there all along?