OR/MS Today - June 2000

June 2000

ORacle

The Emperor's New Software

By Douglas A. Samuelson

The OR/MS analyst's wife was obviously upset. "What's the matter, Sue?" he inquired. "Bad day at work?"

"You could say that," she grated. "I spent all day entering and re-entering and trying to correct a handful of orders with this wonderful new software package the company bought. It took me eight hours to do what used to take about 45 minutes. How is this an improvement?"

"That doesn't sound right," the analyst said. "What's the problem?" "The vendor has my boss convinced we just need more training," Sue replied, "but I'm not so sure. The old system didn't seem to have as many ways to trip people up, and it required a lot less work just to get one order processed through setup, inventory control and scheduling delivery."

"Why?" the analyst inquired, sensing a technical challenge. "Do you mean to tell me you have to enter one order more than once?"

"Yeah, about four times," Sue explained. "Once for the order placement, another for the directions to pull inventory, still another for scheduling delivery and a fourth for billing, all on different screens with all kinds of prompts and online error checks. And then the software doesn't check whether the entries are in agreement! It's a nightmare!"

The analyst looked thoughtful. "You know, I've heard that some software companies are moving into new markets and really pulling some slick sales jobs with bad products," he said, "but I didn't know what those stories were about. Now I think I understand.

"You see," he continued, "most people who have worked with computers for a while have learned a few basic principles about how to choose software. First of all, it has to be really easy to use. There's no longer any excuse for making the user learn lots of weird codes and function keys to do simple tasks. You shouldn't need to include experience with the package as a key requirement in your recruiting ads. Software comes with nice graphics, pull-down menus and online help... or people won't fool with it. The test is that you should be able to use it for a while, go do something else for a few months, and come back and be able to pick up pretty much where you left off — no retraining needed." "You couldn't do that with our package," Sue declared.

"That's what it sounds like," the analyst agreed. "Another important test is, you should only have to enter most information once. That's not just for ease of use. It's also essential for version control. If you had to enter the data four separate times, and then updated one of the screens, you know the other places that information was stored wouldn't be updated. That's disaster looking for a chance to happen!"

"It already has," Sue affirmed.

"And then there's this online prompting stuff," the analyst went on. "That's the designer's way of telling you he's much smarter than you are. If you want to do something he didn't think of, you must be wrong! And of course one thing he definitely didn't think of is letting you upgrade the package as your needs change. You pay him for the upgrade he thinks you should have, or you're stuck!" "I'm beginning to feel indignant about this," Sue remarked dryly.

"And so you should," the analyst asserted. "Remember the children's story, 'The Emperor's New Clothes'? These two con men convince the emperor that they make clothes of a new fabric that's beautiful to wise men but invisible to fools. There actually are no clothes at all, but no one wants to speak up and be thought a fool."

"I remember that one," Sue chuckled. "It takes a little boy to blurt out the truth."

"Well, some of these vendors are doing the same thing!" the analyst exclaimed. "They pick on some area like order-entry and inventory, or human resources or billing, where they can count on finding a lot of people who don't have much computer experience. They carefully claim they're selling 'total enterprise solutions,' or some such thing, so maybe the information systems people won't ever even be asked to evaluate the product. Whenever someone has trouble with it, the vendors proceed to sell more training — even though the real problem is a lousy design and a bunch of hype!"

"Interesting," Sue scowled. "I can't wait for our management meeting tomorrow." And she promptly changed the subject.

The next day, over dinner, she was all smiles.

"It turned out a lot of people in our department had had the same problems," Sue beamed. "And so did the people in inventory and shipping. I asked the same questions you did, about version control and error handling and ease of use, and it turned out we all had lost lots of time struggling with this stupid package. The COO, who'd bought the package and all the hype along with it, looked mighty uncomfortable, but he must have decided he couldn't argue with all of us at once. Besides, the productivity numbers were telling him the bad news, too.

"So he asked what we thought we should do," she went on, "and that's when I chimed in, 'Listen, my husband is a systems analyst with years of background in computers. I asked him what he thought, and he said it's a piece of junk! Dump it!' And that's what we decided!"

"When did I say that?" the analyst protested.

"Salesmanship, dear," his wife smiled sweetly.

And that was that.

Douglas A. Samuelson is president of InfoLogix, Inc., a consulting company in Annandale, Va.

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