Wasted Software

We often business owners buy a software package or subscribe to a software service and then fail to properly integrate it. The software is sold on the basis of offering a solution to a problem.

But there is a fallacy in this way of thinking. Software can only implement a business process. Sometimes the software assumes a business process that doesn’t match the business process in use in the business. When that happens, the software will go unused. The purchase of the software might create the false illusion that the problem has been solved.

You can sometimes adapt your internal business process to match the process that is assumed in the software. If that meets your needs then everything will work out fine. But as is often the case, the assumed process in the software doesn’t quite match the process required by your business. This can be seductive because it looks like your system almost works. But something that almost works doesn’t work in practice.