(2003-05-22) McGrath App Customization

Sean McGrath on application Customization. The not-insignificant cost of tailoring a set of applications to a business has resulted in an interesting phenomenon in recent times. Namely, some entrepreneurs have found it easier to build their business models around the default capabilities of a line-of-business application rather than go through the time and cost of tailoring the application to their business model. I came across two examples recently. One was a five person company of road-warriors selling office equipment who set themselves up to directly reflect the model built into their off-the-shelf Contact Management (Sales Force Automation) system. The second was a much larger enterprise that found it easier to change their model to suit the needs of an ERP system rather than have the ERP system configured. (Buy Build Avoid)