In most IWMS software selection procedures I’ve come across customers think they represent an unique business case. However, I’ve been involved in selection procedures for more than two decades now and I have come to conclusion that within the IWMS arena most business cases are for about 80% the same. Organizations that want to buy an IWMS could benefit enormously from off the shelf products based on best practices with predefined work flows, procedures and standardized configurations, potentially saving substantial resources both in time and money.
However, most customers expect an IWMS to exactly match their way of working for 100% without compromises. This implicates bespoke development or customization, since off the shelf products will never entirely support an organizations working processes. This is exactly what is causing a whole lot of problems. These problems vary in severity and impact on the organization but have one thing in common, they are all based on the Customization Paradigm.
Customization Paradigm
The customization paradigm is about the triangular relationship between an organizations’ processes, customization and configuration. Before presenting the paradigm I’d like to clarify the three concepts.
- Processes – The processes that enable organizations to maximize the RE and FM performance in contribution of the primary process.
- Customization – Bespoke Development in the IWMS core altering the source code of the core product
- Configuration – Specifically tuning the IWMS System towards organizational processes without adding business logic, fields, etc to the core of the IWMS System
The paradigm implicates the following:
Organizations that exactly try to match all processes by customization of the IWMS System in order to contribute to the business performance, will contribute less to the business performance than organizations that configure the IWMS System accepting that it will not exactly match all processes.
Reasons
There are a number of reasons that support the paradigm.
- Customization is expensive
All processes and business rules need to be programmed which will take quite some time therefore being very expensive. - Customization is time consuming
Programming is time consuming. Even minor changes (such as work flow changes) can take weeks because all rules have to be programmed. - Customization is inflexible
Although you might think that all bespoke development is very flexible it is not. All modifications to custom developments is besides time consuming also very inflexible. Even minor changes are in most cases extremely difficult and can’t be done by the organization itself. This leads to point 4. - Customization ensures dependency on the IWMS Vendor
If your organization can’t do minor changes (field labels, work flows, etc. ) yourself you will be creating a dependency on the IWMS vendor. In fact you will be married to this vendor and divorce is painful. - Customization causes upgrade problems
Almost in every implementation of an IWMS that I have been involved in customization causes upgrade problems. Since most bespoke development is developed at the customer it hardly ever returns in the core product. This implicates that bespoke development is not tested in anyway by the IWMS vendor besides at the current version of the customer implementation. If your vendor releases a new version 9 out of 10 that your organization is in trouble. - Customization requires technical skills
If your entire solution is customized to your needs changes require substantial technical skills to do modifications. Since most professionals in FM and RE do not have a technical background. You will need IT people to do business modifications. This leads to point 7. - Customization ensures dependency on the IT Department
When the IWMS is implemented within the organization only technically skilled professionals (either from the Vendor or IT) can do modifications to the business procedures. This ensures that even from a functional IWMS perspective you will be depending on the IT Department to do changes for you.
Although there are quite some other disadvantages to customization the above are the most important ones. In the next post I will discuss: 7 Reasons why you should configure your IWMS
Steven,
Great posting on the pitfalls associated with customized IWMS implementations.
I just wanted to let you and your readers know that TRIRIGA provides customers with graphical and highly intuitive configuration tools to rapidly configure and reconfigure applications and extend application capabilities without changes to source code.
This reduces traditional software development time up to 33%.
John
http://www.tririga.com
Thanks for the great article! While customization is sometimes needed a new IWMS user should never customize during the initial implementation as use of the system will bring about systemic change that will require changes to the process and more customization. It is better to choose a solution that is configurable with low cost implementations that allow a new IWMS user to get started and get quick wins in their business and then use system tools to self configure their environment to meet their needs. Many solutions require big upfront costs with an enormous amount of business process engineering efforts and fail due to these long expensive projects. Success comes from quickly reaching success and building on that success with a flexible IWMS solution.