The customization equation has always been a difficult recipe – a subtle mix of three parts regulatory requirements mixed with two parts user-adoption and then simmered to perfection by a competent group of developers to be consumed by a team of end-users.  The process was almost always a journey from disdain (“What do you mean it can’t do this?”) to total satisfaction (“I don’t know what we’d do without this!”).  In the back of their minds, everyone seemed to know that the risk probably never really matched the reward, but there was always a sense of accomplishment.  And done properly, the customization was almost always viewed as adding value.

Today, virtually every upgrade now talks about de-customization and people are realizing that the cost of de-customizing is almost comparable to the initial cost of the development.  Interesting twist.  CIO magazine presents an interesting perspective that everyone facing an upgrade should read. Here’s a taste:

“We do see more and more CIOs going the ‘less customization’ route” nowadays, she says. “In the last round of ERP deployments that people did, maybe 10 years ago, they did a lot of customizations. But I would say that the majority today are going 90 percent out of the box — with very vanilla installations. It gives you a more predictable and cheaper deployment and then obviously, it makes upgrades less disruptive and less costly.”

Part of the reason for this recent trend is that ERP vendors are now recognizing that if they build applications that include verticalization, they will be easier for more companies to adopt with fewer problems and far less customization, she says.

So, you flipped your coin, made your decision, executed your strategy and observed the results.  Now you have the coin again – heads or tails? What’s your strategy?

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MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

As industry veterans in the enterprise software and professional services business, the notion of “what’s next” in technology is continually being discussed, especially now that spending is resuming.

I recently attended a Gartner Group presentation entitled Top Predictions for 2011 and Beyond, expertly presented by Dan Plummer. It’s obvious now that technology is tied to value, and the ability to create it through technology is rooted in the CIO’s performance. I submit, based on the points made below, that skills will be rooted in the Social Sciences, as opposed to quantitative analysis and definition around ROIs.

At a high level, here are some of Gartner’s top predictions.  Be sure to read the detailed explanation of each here.

1. A G20 nation’s critical infrastructure will be disrupted and damaged by on-line sabotage.

2. New revenue generated each year by IT will determine the annual compensation of most new global 2000 CIOs.

3. Information-smart businesses will increase reorganized IT spending per head by 60%.

4. Tools and automation will eliminate 25% of labor hours associated with IT services.

• The IT services industry will transfer from craftsman to industrialized model.
• Tools and automation improve productivity and lower overall cost of IT.
• Some basic work functions and related jobs will disappear or will be reduced in scope.
• IT services will invest in developing automation – if not, will be relegated to commodity staff-augmentation status.

5. Most external assessments of enterprise value and viability will include explicit analysis of IT assets and capabilities.

6. 80% of enterprises using external cloud services will demand independent certification that providers can restore operations and data.

7. 20% of non-IT Global 500 companies will be cloud service providers.

8. Companies will generate 50% of web sales via their social presence and mobile applications.

9. By 2014 – 90% of organizations will support corporate applications on personal devices.

10. By 2013 – 80% of businesses will support a workforce using tablets.

11. By 2015 – 10% of your on-line “friends” will be non-human.

Note the predicted trends in mobile computing and cloud services.  Regarding the latter, it’s time for cloud services to come of age; prediction #6 is all but guaranteed, especially after recent high-visibility outages by Tumblr and Skype.

Also note social platforms: over the next few years, it won’t be about saying you’re on them.  Web sales and brand recognition will be about using these tools well.

From where we sit – as specialists in PeopleSoft’s ALM suite (which includes IT Asset Management (ITAM) functionality – #5 is spot on.  We talk to clients regularly who want the most possible intelligence about their enterprise assets, and IT is no exception.  Poorly-utilized (or unutilized) IT assets diminish enterprise value, and we have clients already asking us to help them get a handle on what they have deployed in the field and how it’s being used.  The intelligence is getting that granular and will only continue to do so.

What do you think?  Agree?  Disagree?  See something different?  We’d love to hear your 2011 IT predictions in the comments.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More business posts.

We’ve talked about PeopleSoft Real Estate Management (REM) before, but I  want to take a moment to highlight an example of two common pains that many companies endure before realizing they need a full REM solution.  Like everything else, this is an exercise in tipping points: your tools work well enough until one day, frustration and complexity and lack of functionality gain critical mass and you begin searching for something better.

Let me be clear: Microsoft Excel – what most companies use until they realize they have created a bit of an XLS monster – is a great tool, but it quickly crumbles under its own weight when its forced to keep track of buildings, valuations, depreciation and lease renewals across lots of physical locations.

Below is an illustration of only two pain points that I see very frequently with clients who are looking to graduate to a full REM solution.

Help Manage Complexity

For a moment, let’s assume you are a retailer with 1,000 physical, leased locations to manage.  We know Excel is a standard at many companies to track Accounts Payable (AP) transactions. That’s fine and well, but under our lease scenario, keeping track of lease renewals (and the overall process for doing so) is almost impossible using Excel.  Typically, customers need at least six months to begin the lease renegotiation process comfortably, and if they wait too long, they lose massive leverage, which in turn quickly translates to too much money spent.  With a system like PeopleSoft REM, you can set up multiple alerts for each of your 1,000 locations to help kick off the lease renegotiation process.  This may seem like a minor thing until you calculate what 1,000 poorly-negotiated new leases would cost you over the length of whatever terms bind your agreements.  You’re quickly talking real money in a very serious way.

Reporting

This is self-evident to some degree, but massively useful when it comes to managing 1,000 locations and looking at those assets in terms of the data that’s important to you.  Excel has no built-in reporting, let alone out-of-box reporting that gives you insight into real estate-specific operations or KPIs.  Managing 1,000 locations via manual Excel reports would be nothing short of a nightmare, and it has no built-in real estate contexts, so building them in the first place would be difficult to all but the seasoned Excel/real estate expert.  This problem is obviously circumvented by a REM system such as PeopleSoft’s, as reporting is built-in and natively understands many REM operations.  This seems like a luxury until you see everything PeopleSoft REM can do, when you suddenly ask yourself how you’ve been able to limp along without it.

You might say, “Yeah, so what?” to both of these until you realize the absolute weight of performing these tasks manually with a tool ill-prepared for the job.  In my client engagements, when I illustrate the benefits of an REM system from these standpoints, people truly get excited.  Why?  Because they realize how much internal/staff bandwidth they can free up for other projects while letting an intelligent REM system pull the levers behind the curtain with no babysitting.

It’s a very, very powerful thing.  Remember, with enterprise tech, the gods often live in the details.

If any of this sounds like something you’re wrestling with, please email me (seriously!) or give us a call at 800-774-5187.  I’d love to help you sort your plans out.

Previously by David Brunet:

Quantifying the Value of Integration With PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Real Life Example
Quick Look: PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) 9.1 Enhancements
PeopleSoft ‘Edge of the Enterprise’ Applications: eSupplier Connection & eSettlements
PeopleSoft Financials: Source-to-Settle 9.1 Enhancements
PeopleSoft IT Asset Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: A Deeper Look
PeopleSoft Real Estate Management: A Deeper Look
An Introduction to PeopleSoft Asset Lifecycle Management
Sneak Peek: PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal 9.1
PeopleTools 8.5: A Look Inside

Related whitepapers (PDF):

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management: An Introduction and Overview of Benefits

Related web content:

MiPro Consulting: PeopleSoft Services
MiPro Consulting: Resources

From CIO Insight: A survey of 300 senior IT professionals corroborated something we’ve been seeing for the past few years: most ERP systems are dramatically underutilized in terms of functionality.

The survey, conducted by Accenture and targeted at senior IT pros across North America and the UK, yielded some interesting facts:

• Most organizations use only 64% of their ERP system’s core functions
• 50% say they don’t need the capabilities provided by their ERP systems (Ed. note: is this because they truly don’t need them, or because they don’t know they exist or how they can benefit the business?)
• One-fifth say they don’t make use of all the functionality due to lack of time to learn how to apply the features
• 31% use ERP systems in half or less of the organization
• 37% of UK companies and 27% of North American companies have little or no data sharing with their customers
• Only 19% have fully integrated their ERP system with customers’ systems
• 77% believe emerging Web 2.0 technologies will have a positive impact on future ERP usage
• 28% widely use SaaS throughout their organization
• Generally, most believe that more than half of current ERP systems will be replaced by new technologies
• 76% say ERP systems provide a competitive advantage and strategic value to their organizations
• 87% believe that spending on ERP systems, including new technologies like SaaS, will increase or remain steady in the future

From our experience with both traditional ERP (PeopleSoft) and SaaS (Workday) customers, the survey is spot-on.  On the ERP side, we find many clients don’t use their systems nearly as well as they could; in fact, this drove us to create a packaged service, called PeopleSoft Value Optimization [PDF], that is focused squarely on helping customers get the most out of their existing ERP investment.  It’s quite literally as simple as that, and our customers are glad someone can help them stretch their already-spent ERP dollars further.

As a closing tangent, this entire topic is a testament to the value of simplicity in engineering (I’m going to avoid the word elegance, even though it’s likely more apropos).  No matter how robust you make something, if it’s difficult to implement and maintain, most won’t bother with the upper echelon of advanced features.  It’s true for ERP, photo manipulation apps, and mobile phones.  As technology continues to infiltrate every corner of our lives, it will be true for most everything.