Off-The-Shelf Solutions Are NOT As Advertised
WARNING: Major Integration And Planning Required
This article tackles the final resolution under the theme of wasting money. Feel free to start at the beginning — here. Resolution:
Most off-the-shelf solutions waste time, attention, and money. Data support should be involved in every infrastructure decision.
Somewhere in this century, business executives became innamored with the idea of off-the-shelf solutions. Hell, more recently, we even pretend they are plug-and-play. The harsh reality is the much more 20th century tagline: Some Assembly Required is more appropriate but still likely an understatement guaranteed to set unrealistic expectations. Sadly, it gets worse.
Somewhere in this century — CIOs decided information wasn’t as sexy as technology. CTOs were born… blame silicon valley. One might wonder about the move from implied value — Information to simply nebulous sizzle — Technology… but that doesn’t win you many friends. Of course technology is always branded as making life “faster and easier”. Since cheaper was harder to negotiate — they began demanding faster and easier integration cycles on their plug-and-play toys… I mean, technology. The rest is bad data.
You don’t have a data issue. You have a systems issue. — me, often
“Off-the-shelf is faster, easier, and cheaper. You don’t even need to worry your data engineers. Our interfaces are plug-and-play. We just need one of your software devs to spend an hour with our integration team. Don’t worry, we’ll train the business users. We recommend a 6 month integration window but we can cut that back to 90 days… Six weeks? Absolutely!”
It is music to the business’ ears. Few expensive devs required. The business will be self-serve AND no reason to even talk to that data support team endlessly whining about prioritization queues and the like. All of which seems completely reasonable IF you are connecting a cool new toy to the company that will have zero connection to the things you make money from… i.e. the business.
That becomes clear just days after integration when people start asking for the numbers, the impacts, or the upside this tool was sold on. Suddenly, the data is bad. Maybe it is missing. Null. Or just nonsensical. It is DIRTY.
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The vendors integration team (because their sales team is LONG gone) blames your data support team. It is easy enough considering they never met them. Meeting ensue. It starts with an ‘hour’ long ‘call’ that ends abruptly (either early without answers and a promise to enlist higher resources OR well past an hour with peak frustration and exasperated agreement to follow-up).
Three weeks and seven large meetings later…
Your team is frustrated with the vendor and the data support team (where is their ‘magic’ now). The vendor is now blaming all the other tools and systems in your business. And, to be clear, this doesn’t happen to their other clients. And our friend the CTO, succumbing to sunk cost fallacy and the metaphorical anvil that just fell on their ego is working double time — not to fix issues — but to distance themself from them.
Wow — that was definitely faster, easier, and cheaper! Or? Possibly? A giant waste of time, attention, and money… just saying.
I once thought that getting the data support team involved in all infrastructure decisions was the cure all. I learned, the hard way, that is only true if everyone is listening (that includes the data people). I witnessed colleagues that were merely checking boxes for CYA. Sadly for them, two can play that game and CEOs who are shown detailed email chains where the data team is pointing out dysfunction and everyone else steamrolling over it… well, some react well and others make you realize you need to be somewhere else. Incidentally, if future projects now have more hallway conversations than emails … be warned. But I digress… often.
To Be Clear
I am not condemning off-the-shelf. I am condemning unrealistic expectations of ease, speed, and resource-lite thinking. System integration is not easy, rarely fast, and always requires resources. Your ONLY hope is start with the right expectations.
“But George,” oh no “That is why we have so many Salesforce modules. It takes care of that integration issue.” Says everyone up until they add that Xth module that suddenly breaks everything. Behemoth infrastructure players are better, for a price… until they are not.
The right tool for the right job is actually a DIY motto — remember that. Better yet, embrace it.
Thanks for reading. If you want to read more — consider my latest book:
