What we can learn about business systems from big business

Big business makes extensive use of specialist contract staff on large software projects, and for many years I was one of these ‘contractors’. My various contracts saw me working at house-hold name organisations in the aviation, hospitality, media, technology, financial services, logistics and sports sectors. Where I saw first-hand what they were doing with their business systems.

They’ve tried it and it didn’t work!
For many years, and I’m going back a few years now, the goal was to build a business-wide, do it all, integrated system. These are now referred to as monoliths: which is defined as large, powerful, rigid, and slow to change.

The idea – a single, integrated system sharing resources – is a good one, but in practice the disadvantages often proved greater than the advantages. The close coupling of key functions often meant that a failure in one area could make the whole system unusable. This tight integration also robbed them of the flexibility and capacity for rapid change that’s so important to modern businesses.

Jack of all trades . . .
Some of the ‘do everything’ systems were the by-product of a system that provided important core functionality really well – but with other capabilities as add-ons. While it would be unfair to say they were ‘master of none’, many of these were ‘master of one trade, jack of all others’! An example might be the hotel system that’s great at room reservations and guest billing, but with weaker marketing, supplier management, and cost accounting functionality.

While all this was unfolding, we saw an explosion in specialist software providers that are masters of what they do: be it marketing automation, simplifying payroll, or automating the work of field engineers. Alongside a move to cloud computing – enabling ‘evergreen’, continuously updated and improved software, and anywhere systems access.

Big businesses were in serious danger of being out-manoeuvred by newer and smaller competitors.

Moving to microservices
As a result, big businesses are now pursuing a ‘microservices architecture’, where applications and systems are developed as a collection of services. These are loosely coupled together and communicate through lightweight protocols. The key point here is that services and applications can evolve independently of each other – so a CRM or ERP system can be upgraded without affecting other systems, such as finance.

The relative independence of the overall system’s component elements also means that big businesses can benefit from incorporating off-the-shelf services and applications.

A microservices approach makes it easier to build and develop applications, improves productivity and speed, allowing separate teams to work on different functions in parallel, and increases flexibility.

So, what’s all this mean for someone running a small or mid-sized business?

Big businesses lessons for you
The dream of a perfect ‘do it all’ system is probably just that: a dream, an illusion, a fantasy.

Accepted industry best practice is now focused on having a set of ‘best of breed’ applications, that communicate with each other through controlled software interfaces (‘Application Protocol Interfaces’ or APIs). As a rule, these enable changes to be made to one system without adversely affecting the other system and allow updates to one without affecting its ability to communicate with each other. All provided from the cloud.

Before we move on its worth clarifying ‘best of breed’. In reality, there rarely is an absolute best choice. The best system for Tesco may not be the best system for you. Rather like choosing a car, budget and a host of other requirements come into consideration, and the ‘best’ car for you could turn out to be a bike!

Most likely, you already use a collection of business applications with most (all?) delivered from the cloud. A position many big businesses, still trying to move away from their monolith, envy. Your weakness may be the links, or integrations, between your systems.

So, what should you do about developing your business systems? Start by listing the improvements you’d like to make. Some of these may be achieved with quick and easy to achieve system integrations. In many businesses data in one system is being manually re-entered into another system. This needn’t be the case.

Also, ask if any of your systems are fundamentally not fit for purpose? And if so, how and why? Moving from one system to another is a big decision, and before you do so you need to be confident that it’ll be worth the pain. I’ve seen businesses junk a system they’ve become fed up with when an upgrade, add-on or integration would have resolved their main frustrations. As my dear old gran likes to say, ‘be careful you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’.

Finally, plan any changes over a realistic multi-year timeframe.

If you’re struggling to decide what to do, I’m always happy to talk to customers about their business systems, so please get in touch.