I attended a seminar titled ‘Improve your life through better decisions’ yesterday. Michael E. McGrath was the speaker. He has written several books on the subject – available on Amazon.

His mission is to help people improve their lives through better decision making. He provided a handout on the top ten self-destructive behaviors causing bad decisions:

* Indecision – when you just can’t make decisions

* Not thinking it over – Making rash and impulsive decisions

* Emotional decisions – letting your emotions control your decisions

* Running with lemmings – bowing to the pressure of others without thinking

* Acting like a frog in boiling water – letting decisions pass you by

* Falling for pressure tactics – being forced into buying something you shouldn’t

* Buyer’s remorse – regretting your purchase decisions

* You can’t choose what you hadn’t thought of – not considering all your options

* Failing to run the numbers – not considering the true cost of your decisions

* Unintended consequences – not anticipating the consequences of your decisions

I am sure that all of us can relate to one or more of these.

Our Thoughts...

I hadn’t really thought about how my decisions have affected my life. As I think about it now, I see his point – I could improve my life through better decisions.

I would add the following to his destructive behavior list…

Based on my experience, I have seen many companies make technology decisions before understanding the problem and looking at likely potential solutions. Choosing the technology first is like the tail waging the dog.

Regarding indecision…

Several prospects as well as Michael McGrath point out that it is frequently better to make an adequate decision that is timely than an optimal decision that is too late. In the case of enterprise software, what you will learn while going from purchase to implementation could very well be worth it. And, as I pointed out in an earlier ‘ideas’, your current problem is costing you some amount of money each and every month.

Your Thoughts...

You are looking to solve a business problem. You have determined that there are software alternatives that will reduce or solve the problem. Often, you will discover a couple different approaches to solving that problem - Software Suites/Platforms vs. a Complete Solution.

An enterprise BPM suite or platform will be sold in modules. The most common modules include: Process modeling, Process [business rule] engine, Process analysis tools, Process simulation and an Integration server [or toolkit, or…]. Each of these modules are sold separately and may require some integration to get them all to work together.

A complete solution is just that – you purchase one piece of software that has some or all of the elements of each of the modules [identified above] built in.

Our Thoughts...

The enterprise BPM suite or platform approach…

The decision to sell the software by modules is a marketing decision. They hope to gather more revenue from their customer by selling the software in pieces. These more expensive suites or platforms may have more features than the alternative – as a matter of fact; they may have features that you will never need to use. Often, getting all of these modules to work together will require some software services.

If you haven’t noticed, the companies selling modules will also have a large professional services organization.

A complete solution…

Selling a complete solution is also a marketing decision – they target a specific market. They intend to service their specific market particularly well so that they can dominate their space. Their software will include all of the features necessary to create an application that will put them on top.

So, you have to decide…

You could go with SAP or Oracle, for example, and spend big bucks now to solve a not so expensive problem. The upside - this may enable you to solve other business problems in the future; The downside – it does lock you into purchasing lots of software services.
Or, you can go with a complete solution today that will solve your problems rather inexpensively. The upside – the solution is less expensive and the solution will be implemented sooner; The downside – you may have to buy more software in the future.

Your Thoughts...

Since we made a marketing decision to be a complete solution, I am very interested in your thoughts…