Business process automation

Factors Against a Custom Application

My previous post pointed out a few of the reasons why one might choose to create a custom application.  For this post I'd like to further the discussion to review some of the reasons (valid and otherwise) for NOT creating a custom application.  I would include in this...

Identifying Potentially Valuable Custom Applications

Without fail, in my experience as a developer any potentially valuable custom application project has been the result of identifying some area of operation which:

• Has become unwieldy, requiring too many steps or multiple data entry
• Has become more and more demanding as a...

Why Create a Custom Application?

First -- In the interest of public discloser I must confess that perhaps I am biased on the subject of custom applications.  While writing my previous post I found myself once again becoming excited about application development, and more especially the value that such an application can...

Accelerated ERP Implementation Risks

To this day (...and possibly forever) I remember August 1, 1999 not with fond memories, but rather with a complex set of emotions which begin a churning upset in my stomach.  The day was, without a doubt, one of the most memorable days of my life for its stress level.  It was the perfect example...

Business Changes, Personnel Changes and the Custom Application

There's nothing that I can think of to "shake up" business processes and the custom applications used to support those processes more than a personnel change.  This is most clearly apparent in the small company applications used by a handful of key users in the company.  If for whatever reason...

Software Application Speed and ADD Users

ADD -- aka Attention Deficit Disorder -- is, some say, an altogether too common ailment in today's society, at least in the U.S. While I certainly don't intend to debate that issue, a recent experience got me to thinking about how children with ADD do and will grow up to be computer application...

New Applications – Taking the First Step

Social networking in business has been receiving quite a bit of press lately with many differing views on just what should or should not be allowed, or how to use various social networking tools now available.  I ran into an interesting read in an article "

What keeps an out-of-date application in place

I had the opportunity recently to make some minor changes to reports originally created in the late 80's. The application is a character-based app running on an "old" version of SCO Unix, and hardware that has been kept alive by some clever mix and match combination of "old" components taken from...

Information Overload

Information overload is a topic which has seen enough blog and article time to provide a generous amount of information overload on its own!  As an example, I searched Google for the term "information overload" and it returned the first 10 of approximately 2,160,000 "hits" (...but who's counting?...

Sometimes the Obvious is Missing

We developers need input from our users! This became very clear to me once again last week when I received an unexpected request from a user to add a simple lookup function to a field in their order entry program which has been in use (...and regularly enhanced) for over 5 years.  When I first...