Great Business Software is F.I.R.M. (Part 2 of 4)

Great business software is Interwoven!

There are several signs of a system and software that are not interwoven. 

• Silos of spreadsheets kept on individual PCs
• Procedures and processes differ from one location to another
• Different ways of handling things from one person to another even in the same location
• The ability for employees to determine when, how, and if information is going to be recorded in the comapny system
• Information used by management may be inconsistently defined and collected and is not up to date

Imagine a recent conversation I had with a company that is a wholesaler for several different manufacturers of competing financial products.  They receive thousands of applications every year, many of which cannot be processed because they are incomplete or not filled out correctly.  The problem is that every person gets to decide how they are going to do it.  The cost to the wholesaler is huge in that they must spend a lot of time seeing that these applications get fixed and completed.

Ask yourself, what processes in my company are dysfuntional like this?  What are the hard costs, soft costs, and opportunity costs?

Interwoven ... a better way!

An Interwoven system is like a Navajo blanket.  The thread and the artists unique vision combine to make a beutiful fabric.  They cannot be seperated.  Nor can great business software design be separated from the unique vision and processes of the company.  They are interdependent of each other.

Interwoven business systems and software look like the this.

• Everybody loves the system becuase doing their job would seem very difficult without it
• The software mirrors the process exactly.  There is no process "outside" the software. 
• All the input is consistently defined as to who, what, when, where, and how it is done.  The integrity of the input is extremely high.

The obvious benefit to Interwoven business systems and software is the integrity it brings.  All the i's are dotted and t's are crossed (except for the occasional, pre-defined exceptions).  This will go a long way towards eliminating errors of many kinds that cost money and damage the reputation of the company.  Not to mention that customers will recognize that "your people really know what they are doing."

There are at least two major benefits that are not so obvious--Proliferation and Unleashing Talent.

These two advantages will be addressed in Part 4 of this blog post. 

Photo on Flickr by mj_picks.