Are too expensive – This is a really silly objection. I’m not saying that systems don’t cost money. I’m just saying that the immediate cost benefit of good systems can be so easily proven that it shouldn’t be a concern. Obviously, if there is inadequate payback, don’t do it! The real objection here may be that many systems providers have difficulty meeting their promises, locking their customers into a big upfront investment and escalating costs. Folks wind up paying more for less. That is a big problem in this industry. We address this dynamic in our What We Do – Low Risk discussion.

Produce unreliable results – Any good system implementation has, built into it, a plan for verifying results. The trick is to do as much verification, as early as possible, and with as little interruption to normal business processes as possible. It is too common for system implementations to be structured so that on a certain Monday the whole organization is asked to “flip the switch”, abandoning their old ways and trusting the new way. Once the switch is “flipped” every system problem becomes an emergency and the potential for added expense, frustration, and loss of customer confidence. Our asSimpleAsPossible© process is built around the premise that small, quickly developed, tested and deployed system elements keep this risk of unreliable results to a minimum.

Cause organizations to lose their agility – How many times have you tried to clear up a problem with a vendor and are told “our system won’t let me do that”. This is usually because that vendor has purchased a solution that doesn’t quite meet their needs. Small and medium size businesses are sometimes overwhelmed by the marketing dollars that the Microsofts, Oracles, and SAPs of this world invest to sell their solutions. The value-added-resellers who are the agents for these companies make well-supported sales calls but often begin the post-sale implementation by asking the solution buyer to act just like their competition (whom were also sold the same solution).

Expose corporate secrets to outside interests (proprietary process protection) – Outsourcing and dealing with companies that have sold these exact same systems to your competitors poses a significant risk of exposing your valuable proprietary business processes and dynamics to your competition. See our discussion here on outsourcing.

Too much “work” for management to implement – This concern is most usually associated with the common practice of monolithic system implementations that simultaneously take the effort of the whole organization. Our asSimpleAsPossible© approach to implementation is serial. Small bits, delivered often, tested quickly eventually build into a significant system. Spoon-fed, bite-at-a-time implementation avoids risk and excessive management requirements. See our What We Do – Low Risk discussion