Would you pay for empty calories?
August 19, 2008
Empty calories is defined in Wikipedia as:
…calories present in high-energy foods with poor nutritional profiles, typically from processed carbohydrates or fats.
In software, empty calories represents the cost of maintaining business applications that delivers little or no value. Today, I believe the industry is feeding us a diet that inflates the vendors’ bottom line but keeps business starved of innovation. How long can this continue?
Larry Dignan believes the time is right for disruption in the marketplace. If it happens then it will send shockwaves thorughout the industry. All the way down to Sage.
Vinnie Mirchandani outlines a conversation we had with SAP yesterday. It gets us part way down the track but we need justifications based on solid metrics. Usually, the ones we hear are those where the softeare vendor crows about the renewal rate. We’re now questioning the value proposition. Hard.
I offer an alternative model that could release resources for innovation in what I see as a win-win-win. But - it will requires the industry to get a grip on reality and solve its deep rooted problems. We’re in the 21st century. The models we see come from the early 1990s. They simply don’t work anymore - at least not for customers.
As professionals advising clients about implementations, this should be top of agenda in your thinking about the value you can deliver.
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Most business applications in existence are conceived and designed for collection of data for management reporting, and support of very repetitive processes. The role of people, from that point of view, is one of translators of natural language communications into structured, formalized data for processing. That model does not seem to be deliver very value to the enterprise of employees anymore and brings to mind the images of Charlie Chaplin on the assembly line. However IMO the biggest problem is not the lack of technological innovation, but low quality of line and executive management skills. I think there are a lot more capabilities available today, in terms of technologies and tools, than there is an intellectual leadership to take a meaningful advantage of it.
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Sorry, forgot to add that I agree, there are surely a lot of ways these applications can be re-designed and improved. I just doubt there is an existing ability of management leadership to see any of it implemented with meaningful return on needed investment.
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