Customisation
The degree of automation has a strong correlation to the degree of standardisation. Companies with many exceptions in the process cannot automate work as easily. "To achieve the desired level of automation, customer-specific customisation is usually developed in such cases. This also applied to ISPnext in the past. After all, the customer is always right, right? Nevertheless, our experience is that customisation leads to sub-optimisations, additional costs and long-term risks in operations”, says John.
With customisation, you close a gap in the process that has arisen from habit, agreements made or laws and regulations. However, customisation has numerous drawbacks, such as:
- Additional cost: it has not yet been developed, making it difficult to estimate the impact and additional costs (now and in the future);
- Knowledge: the knowledge how to develop and maintain it is often transferred to just a few people. In the long run, this increases dependence on the supplier or one particular employee;
- Operational risk: updates and migrations of systems are risky. It is difficult to estimate the impact of new features on the performance of the system.
Cloud software
The introduction of cloud software has increased the degree of standardisation. Cloud solutions are no longer point solutions. Instead, these are designed to support a complete end-to-end process. With SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) software, all changes and new features are automatically made available to the entire customer base. The goal: to provide faster, better, more stable applications and functionalities. Replicability for all customers is a key factor in the cloud software development process. It also ensures compliance with laws, regulations and market needs. A key consideration in this respect is discontinuing customer-specific functionalities or links. This does not mean that a system cannot move with the needs of organisations and the design of processes.
Identifying market developments, customer preferences and emerging or changing technologies ensures that new functionalities are developed that better meet the needs. This ensures that more than just a single customer benefits; instead, it benefits a group of customers from, say, a certain country, the same industry, or with the same ERP system. Cloud software offers flexibility by enabling and disabling features and making configuration choices.
"Software implementations are now aligned with the bigger picture in change management."
John Schouten, Director Product Management | ISPnext
The benefits of SaaS software at a glance:
- Accessible anytime, anywhere with an internet connection;
- Secure environment equipped with the latest security technology and monitoring;
- Future-proof and stable environment through automatic updates and maintenance;
- Scalable by automatically adjusting capacity as needed;
- Predictable costs through standardisation;
- Higher satisfaction and productivity through standardisation and best-practice processes;
- Using standard links to exchange and provide insight into real-time data.
Customer-oriented or customer-bossed
As cloud software is increasingly mainstream, the discussion about whether or not to apply customisation is also intensifying. "Increasingly, we are seeing organisations adopting a policy to no longer apply customisations. Software implementations are now aligned with the bigger picture in change management. A key question organisations should focus on is what value differentiated back-office processes have. Why would your organisation not be able to adopt best-practice processes? After all, these have been proven time and again with industry peers and other like-minded organisations. Why are you running business risks with every software update, paying more and having to keep customisation knowledge up to date?"
By using best-practice processes, cloud solutions can offer customer centricity. The software vendor’s proper advice on the possibilities and application options is a key aspect in this context. This increases the connection between customer and supplier. It allows for seizing opportunities and optimising processes that otherwise would have remained undetected.
Future-proof
The importance of standardisation and the risks and additional cost of customisation are still regularly underestimated. Cloud software enables future-proofing and scaling organisations in a secure environment that can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Real-time insights and best-practice processes enable higher productivity, and business operations become more predictable.
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