Packaged enterprise software

This indicates that almost half of those organizations implementing a package had users that did not feel the package was good enough in its off-the-shelf form. In other words, users favored their existing applications over the functionality provided by the application package.

This is a critical indicator that management may not have investigated the applicability of the package to business requirements or not understood the business requirements in the first place. One additional challenge is the issue of user-based "shadow" systems. These systems are rarely discussed, yet are significantly problematic given that almost all business units perform certain key functions beyond the reach of IT. These systems are an impediment to package deployment and should be identified during the initial planning and assessment for package deployment.

The bottom line for determining user benefits involves the difficulty in realizing benefits from an application package and the extent to which best practices embedded within an application package have actually helped an organization meet its goals.

Finally, respondents were asked to what extent best practices as embedded within the application package have helped the organization meet its goals see Graph Clearly these results did not live up to expectations given the survey findings related to the degree of application package customization and the degree and difficulty of organizational changes needed to adapt business processes and infrastructure to accommodate the application package.

The lessons learned from the application package survey are significant and point to a series of recommendations that organizations can pursue to achieve greater benefits from their application package investments. The majority of responding organizations are users of ERP systems but additionally use a combination of other application packages.

While this is not necessarily a sign of success or failure, executives should note that a package is unlikely to deliver or be deployed to the full breadth of capability that a given package provider may be suggesting. Package customization requirements were extensive and exceeded the expectations of survey participants. This finding suggests that the time and budget allocations for package customization efforts are extending beyond the project parameters anticipated at the onset of the project.

Integrating application packages into complex computing environments is difficult and time-consuming. These findings could be the result of not fully mapping package capabilities to existing IT environments, including business data, existing systems, middleware technology, and business process automation solutions.

One telling finding is that users continue to favor their existing applications over the functionality provided by the application package. Users also like to hold on to their shadow systems that have been user-developed to surround core applications. This is likely an indicator that management may not have investigated the applicability of the package to the business requirements, or it may not have understood the business requirements in the first place that the package was to address.

Organizations are seeking productivity and quality improvements across lines of business to leverage industry best practices.

In an attempt to meet these requirements using a package strategy, organizations had to modify their business processes in favor of the business processes embedded within the application package.

In addition, respondents had difficulty implementing changes to their business processes. This finding not only signals a potential for budget overruns but also points to why only portions of certain packages are implemented and why users prefer their legacy applications over the package application. Virtually every respondent had to apply organizational changes, and almost all of those respondents considered these organizational changes to be somewhat difficult, quite difficult, or extremely difficult and time-consuming.

In other words, companies are being forced to change how they operate to align themselves with these application packages. This may be fine with some companies, but other organizations may have not understood that a software package was dictating how they were going to operate. Realizing the benefits of these packages was a challenge for many respondents.

This corresponds to earlier findings related to the degree of organizational change and package customization required. Organizations are not meeting the objectives envisioned when they initially decided to obtain an application package and are not gaining bottom-line value commensurate with the challenges associated with the implementation effort. This is the most critical finding because it suggests that there is a serious gap between what organizations think an application package can deliver and what it ultimately does deliver.

There are real benefits to be derived from application packages as long as organizations can manage expectations and cost-effectively deliver this value to the business community. These findings expose the great conundrum of the application package strategy. Executives want to take advantage of best practices through the acquisition of application packages, but implementing these best practices across an enterprise tends to be more difficult, more time-consuming, and more costly than first anticipated.

In addition, the business users, supposedly the beneficiaries of these best practices, are either demanding changes to these packages or resisting these packages in favor of legacy systems and user-based systems. The bottom line is this: Organizations are making major investments to customize application packages, integrate those packages into surrounding IT environments, and adapt business processes and organizational infrastructures to adapt to these packages.

Yet the benefits accrued from these investments are delivering less than what the business community had anticipated in a variety of best practice categories. What can be done about this?

Here are four recommendations that could address the obvious challenges of application package selection and deployment initiatives:. Spend more time on up-front analysis, mapping business process, organizational, data, and functional requirements for your organization to the capabilities of the package. Powerful enough to make your order fulfillment perfect, while intuitive enough to make your day-to-day management a breeze. Learn more. Align your supply chain with demand, earning more sales while avoiding stockouts and surpluses, powered by data science.

The result: your customers happier and your profits amplified. Easily handling all your financial data as your business grows while staying complied with accounting standards no matter where your business expands to. Deliver your software at the speed and with the efficiency you could never imagine through a continuous, automated testing suite.

Meet your need for expansion — our solutions are built on the cloud, so they can scale as you grow. Packaged software is a good choice for organizations that have fewer unique business needs and objectives. Meanwhile, custom software is likely best for businesses that have specific features in mind, or that are planning to grow in the near future. Decide which qualities are most important to you for your next enterprise automation project, and then go with the solution that has those qualities.

Whether you choose a packaged or custom enterprise automation solution, the important thing is that you make an educated decision. Be sure to weigh all of your options beforehand, and speak with a knowledgeable development partner if you have questions about what custom software can do for your business.

Packaged Software When done right, enterprise automation can give your organization an arsenal of competitive advantages: Speed: Automation can complete many of your complex business processes within seconds or minutes, orders of magnitude faster than human employees.

This allows IT service providers to offer shorter resolution times for their service-level agreements SLAs. Accuracy: By removing manual error from the equation, enterprise automation can make your business processes much more accurate. Developers are in short supply. Here are the skills and programming languages employers need. Time for a Linux smartphone? I've changed the way I charge my iPhone. You should, too. The painful shame of owning an Android phone.

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