Is There Any Customer Worse Off than the Software Customer?

What could be worse than buying very expensive product that hugely affects your business success – from an industry misaligned with its customers?

The realization is finally sinking in that process redesign and acquiring new technology – in that sequence – is really two phases of a single step. Like walking. You pick your foot up, then you put it down. Doing only the “up” or the “down” doesn’t get you far. Same for process and technology. Streamlining process almost always requires new systems enablement, because ineffective systems are more often than not the primary process impediment. And buying new software systems without first redesigning process just helps you do the wrong stuff faster.

But if this is true, and I maintain it is, why should customers have to buy these two, intertwined components from different providers who rarely even know each other? And what’s the fix?

PS: Sorry to be absent for so long. I’ve had a pair of enterprise process redesigns both followed by total technology replacement, and they’ve both been going through the technology search process in lock step. However, I’m finally coming up for air.