12 CAPTURE. COSTTREE 2016 Q4 ISSUE
WALL OF WIRES
When a new piece of software is purchased, it is with the goal of performing a task more efficiently, producing a higher-quality output, or doing something new that you couldn’t do before. Word processing applications are some of the most ubiquitous pieces of software out there, and it certainly falls into our first category of increasing the quality of our output, but not the second—that of decreasing our workload.
Word processors replaced typewriters—no more whiteout, no more paper feeding, no more missed key strokes if you type too fast. We should have been able to produce the same product in less time and accomplish less work. So, what went wrong? Yesterday’s “good enough” feels outdated today, and all sorts of peripheral tasks emerged that became necessary to keep the core technology of the word processor functioning.
No longer “good enough,” the standards for quality increased. The time saved by the new word processor was quickly eaten up by higher standards for presentation. The user could now format with different fonts, margins, borders, and themes. The bar was raised by technology—you can’t just type your RFP in 10-point black font and go home for the day. Also, the complexity of the technical infrastructure that makes your word processor work is vastly larger than that required for your typewriter. We need electricity, an Internet connection to update the software, experts to run those updates, and a network of other users who can make use of your electronic document with their own machines. Instead of creating a straight path to our two goals, technology seems to move the goals to the far end of a foggy tunnel.
Until recently, most software has been “siloed” in a way that makes each user’s journey through the fog a solo effort. We use the software independently. My data doesn’t talk to your data; my templates aren’t your templates. Two users using the same word processing application have to independently format their documents, so, while they both ended up with a superior product in the end (versus a typewriter), they spent more time and money getting there.
What about a much more complex piece of software like the financial module of your ERP? Is that accomplishing our two goals?