Archive for October, 2008

Success depends on applying right technology -not necessarily the most current

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

More often than not, systems integrators and technology companies fall in love with current hottest technologies. It is then common to propose the technology they love, to all of their clients -irrespective of the business pains those clients experience. Often the technology turns out not to be a good fit for the particular problem or that another solution could have been more appropriate unfortunately was completely ignored. This causes discontent and a blame for the entire technology and its shortcomings. This happens more in the software development arena.

For example, we had a construction management company who had a need for keeping track of inventory on each of it’s project sites, so that they may avoid double-ordering of material, a prevalent problem for the client. One of the technology companies they selected proposed a .NET solution that would take 4 months to develop. After about 6 months, the product was still half way completed with 2 software engineers working full time on the project. Finally, the construction company got frustrated and approached us. First thing we did was to assess what they needed and digging deeper what their actual business pain was. In the process we came to know they had sharepoint as well. We quickly, realized that the particular business pain could be solved by an application on sharepoint. After some design, we developed a web based application using sharepoint’s web parts that would not only show how much material was at each project site but also how much was ordered and allocated to go to any particular project along with the estimated time of arrival date. All this meant that project manager would know how much material was at hand and there by reduce to less than 3% down from 40% of double-order errors last year.

This was a simple system put in place in 4 weeks by two software engineers -from design to implementation. Needless to say, customer is very happy and satisfied. Only by applying right technology would you be able to provide good value to the customer.

Sometimes, I cringe when software professionals say they would never use access forms. In fact, we have used access forms and have developed many a complex applications using access forms. For small and medium sized business, this provides a great way to develop an application without breaking the bank. We work to make sure that we provide clients with a software solution that mitigates our client’s business pain at the most value to the client. Hence our motto – ‘We provide technology that work for you’