Considering the cloud

Haseet Sanghrajka says too many companies rush into online enterprise software purchases

There is something about buying enterprise software online that seems to make otherwise vigilant IT decision makers lose their heads. The promise of free trials or petty-cash monthly subscriptions – and the chance to gain immediate access to the hottest new functions – appear to trigger irrational behaviour.

Seduced by the assumed low risk of a pay-monthly, own-nothing plan, companies see a shortcut – a chance to gain access to fabulous new features that can surely only benefit the business – without a drawn-out procurement process. At the click of a link, they're online. By the afternoon, their business could be transformed. Couldn't it?

In their haste to get started, these companies risk missing key steps to guaranteed success, such as scoping and planning an optimised implementation, data migration and role-based user training.

They may conclude that they have less to lose, because the financial outlay is so seemingly inconsequential. But such thinking is naïve and dangerous.

Examples of abandoned cloud-based, subscription-financed solutions abound. This includes some of those rolled out three years previously, which were never given a chance to deliver because they were never fully configured, or because staff were never adequately trained and did not have a proper grasp of how to use them.

Writing off such projects as a bad job is not to walk away without scars. Month by month, costs will have accrued, yet in the meantime no value has been delivered. The result is that time has been lost, money has been spent, and the company is no better off than it was at the beginning.

The situation is actually worse. The business must now start the project all over again with the stigma of a failed implementation.

The fatal error is in the expectation that online means on tap or right now. While the basic functionality may be there, the groundwork still needs to be done to channel this effectively for the business.

Are existing client PCs and infrastructure at the company optimised to run the new software? Are there any compatibility, data migration or integration issues?

What does the organisation hope to achieve with the new software? Has it been designed appropriately to record, manage and deliver the right information to the right people in the right way?

Do staff know the company is implementing the technology, and why? Will they be able to use it, and will they want to?

When a product is bought at some upfront expense and rolled out on the company's premises with help from external experts, these issues will normally have been addressed as part of an implementation methodology. A tangible return on investment is required, and IT managers will be geared towards ensuring maximum success – pulling out all the stops to ensure they do everything right.

All this learned discipline should apply equally to an online software provisioning scenario. The result is exactly the same; the only difference is the way it is delivered and paid for.

Or, rather, that should be the only difference. In reality, there is a third, significant difference: the expectation. In the former scenario, there is an acceptance that additional investments of time and money will be required to make everything work as it should.

In the cloud scenario, by contrast, the expectation is that everything will work out of the box, which is a ludicrous assumption if this is a serious enterprise application.

It is often said that there is no substitute for quality, and this applies doubly to anything based around data.

Whether the software in question is designed to manage and report on financial accounts, or maximise customer relationships, its efficacy will be directly related to the quality of data being harnessed. This in turn will be dictated by the system design and other customised parameters that have been specified – criteria that differ significantly from one business to the next.

While so-called on-demand solutions may boast simplicity through pre-packaging, their ability to deliver performance will be determined by how they are applied and used.

None of this is to undermine the business case for cloud solutions. A pay-monthly subscription and the chance to make upgrades and support someone else's problem carry potentially significant cost-of-ownership benefits, while appealing to accountants by avoiding capital spending.

Ensure that such calculations are made only once consultancy, project planning, customised implementation and training have been provided for. Chances are, the investment needed can be controlled by using packaged rapid implementation methodologies.

The cloud speeds up implementation time. Use that wisely to plan your implementation.

Haseet Sanghrajka is managing director of ST Consulting