There have been many times where I've come across situations where people have this mistaken belief that software will fix all their ills. Surely, anyone with a few years experience know that software is merely a tool designed to fix a problem the way the programmer/designer intended it to be fixed and not the way that you expect it to be fixed.

There is often a huge disparity in the way a company wants a problem to be fixed compared to the way the software actually fixes it and this leaves the company with three options, namely:
a. Change the processes to fit the software.
or
b. Change the software to fit the process.
or
c. Write their own software.

Let's take the classical scenario of a time recording and billing application. Let's say that company X records time on paper sheets which then get passed to finance to generate the bills and send out to the clients. Let's say that the company bills on 15 minute intervals based on a client code.

Obviously, the above scenario is crying out for some sort of automation, the amount of time and money that can be saved with an online tool means it's worth investing in the hardware and IT departments time to get such a system installed.

In the next article I'll take a closer look at the process many companies follow for such a project.