Agile Alternative for Adaptive IT

When companies embark on new systems and processes, it is very tempting to innovate and change across the organization.  However, for each business process modified, you will need to think through all interdependencies and the organization change that will be required for a successful deployment.

And if you are not careful, this approach will cost a lot of time, money and productivity.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when deploying a proprietary ERP system.  Since the goal of these vendors is customer lock-in, they promote as “best practices” an approach that more likely means you should adapt your business to align with their functional footprint rather than the other way around.

Of course, sometimes this makes sense – especially when current approaches may be overly manual, non-scalable. Or perhaps some of your processes have been molded around the limitations of software that was deployed 5 or 10 years earlier.

The point is that each change you take on will require investment in discovery, planning, implementation and training.  This is often complicated by the fact that existing processes are not always as well documented as they should be with heavy reliance on “tribal knowledge” for day to day operations.

With the latest generation web technology and open systems, there is an alternative approach.  For quicker ROI, you can take a more agile approach with rapid deployment, progressive functionality rollout and a continuous improvement process.  With this approach, you can continue with existing operations where this makes sense.