Devil's Advocate: Sausage machine-software

Is there a software suite to suit you? You'll have faced the package versus bespoke dilemma before, says Martin Brampton, but even with financial and HR becoming more important, there's still no general answer...

Our E-envoy, Andrew Pinder, suggests that government IT can be handled by off the shelf packages. Is the old argument for bespoke versus package dead? Evidence for a decisive conclusion looks pretty scant.

Routine functions are cited as suitable for a standardised approach, and HR and finance are the examples chosen. Interestingly, these are areas where the buy versus build argument has become extremely complex. It is not at all clear that the commercial sector has reached a definitive answer.

HR and finance are, of course, the bedrock of what has become known as the ERP system. One factor that greatly accelerated the adoption of products over homegrown systems was the millennium. Many IT managers decided that it was impossible to guarantee compliance for complex and sometimes unwieldy bespoke systems that had been developed over many years.

But that was only a transitory reason and the history of ERP systems has been extremely patchy. The theoretical advantage of a package has always been low price and speed of implementation. Yet the deployment of ERP products has included some spectacular failures. There have been huge cost and time overruns, some of which have resulted in outright cancellations.

Large commercial organisations were plainly not convinced that a standard system could be used straight out of the box. Instead, highly priced consultants were hired to tailor the basic product to fit local circumstances. The costs often dwarfed the initial price and there were often complaints that the result still did not really meet actual needs.

Moreover, very large enterprises were soon afflicted by a problem that could easily occur in government. As they bought and sold subsidiary companies, they rapidly found themselves owning a mix of different and incompatible ERP systems. A new and intractable IT problem was to achieve consistent financial reporting across disparate underlying systems.

An interesting argument put by the E-envoy is that technology can transform government if the software is left standard, with the organisation changing instead. That depends on the popular but highly dubious view that it is easy to change the way people do things.

Large groups that are functioning, even imperfectly, are not easily or quickly persuaded into radical change. Indeed, radical change imposed from outside is rarely practical and the results are typically chaotic. Government itself has examples, such as the passport system, where a new IT system failed to support the real needs of a department, resulting in disaster. And we are now paying higher prices for passports as a result.

Package deployments can be very successful. Where needs are carefully analysed, the product and supplier are selected appropriately and the deployment planned and implemented with skill, the result may be very good. It may also be a failure because in a large organisation the issues are complex and can have unexpected ramifications.

It is also true that painstaking bespoke developments can be very successful and in a complex situation can also be economical. The germ of the idea that IT can be transformational is correct. Bespoke systems that simply automate the status quo are liable to disappoint. Imaginative innovation is needed for new software to be a real success.

On the evidence that is available, it still looks as though there is, as usual, no easy answer. New software is needed at times and both package and bespoke options need to be explored. The organisation’s requirements are only one factor. The availability of management and technical skill is equally important, and may be a critical factor in deciding the route to take. Perhaps one day there will be a suitable package for every situation. There is no sign that day has been reached yet.

** Martin Brampton is a director and founder of Black Sheep Research (www.black-sheep-research.co.uk ), an independent consultancy providing research, writing and speaking services on a wide range of business and technology subjects. Martin was previously a director at Bloor Research, and has worked with IT as a user and analyst for over 20 years. He can be contacted at silicon@black-sheep-research.co.uk.

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