Two of the hot topics in recent times are workflow and business process management. In short, the idea is that automating business processes will make for efficiency. BS. In my experience.
I’ve been offshore for more than 9 years and I don’t trust either the French or Spanish postal service so everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – I do commercially is conducted electronically. That includes billing. I haven’t printed off a single invoice in more than 12 years. These days, I use password protected Writely documents. They’re a bit ugly but hey – it’s an invoice. And yes – I know it’s another advertising medium but it matters not to me or the people with whom I work.
What royally pisses me off is that so few tech vendors are even on nodding terms with the benefits of workflow or BPM. Yet many of those same vendors espouse some message related to this topic. I won’t name names but when I have to yell at someone who tells me they don’t have time to press a fricking button on their workflow system to approve a bill, I get mightily annoyed. And forget trying to get an automated payment advice note – from most tech vendors.
I’m not annoyed at them per se – well in this case I most certainly was. I wonder how far I’d get if I simply didn’t bother to submit my work for the requested date? I’m more annoyed that systems can’t detect an incoming billing request. Or better still, don’t operate automated self-billing. Which has been standard practice in retail and construction industries to my certain knowledge for at least 25 years and works pretty smoothly.
My fear for the future is that in the current rush to get so much ‘stuff’ out there by the open source community and others who are providing low cost or free tools and services, that developers will forget that standards absolutely must be adhered to if we’re to have interoperable applications and services.
Unless the community recognises this we’ll create a miasma for the future that is worse than what we already have. Sure – some companies like NetVibes are doing their bit but its desktop portal is NOT the same as having apps that work together. They’re simply a collection of apps presented in an easy to use manner. And yes, if you’re retrofitting like SAP is doing, then it’s damned hard work. but if tech companies want to make an appreciable difference then they need to start eating their own dog food and giving us the confidence to use tools that truly automate time consuming ‘stuff’ like billing and payment.
In the meantime, I’m seriously thinking about jacking up prices to reflect the fees I’d incur to use PayPal as a settlement medium. Someone has to pay and I’m damned if it’s going to be me. I’ve already paid in lost cashflow. A vital business measure.
