Before getting to the differences between software for running vs managing the business, I did want to touch on another great Kinaxis experience.  Today I had the pleasure of sending out invitations to a number of senior individuals within our customers to ask them to join us for a Strategic Customer Advisory Council before Kinexions.  It is great that so many busy people will take the time with us to sit down and help us shape a future direction.  I think I am looking forward to the Advisory Council more than anything else in Arizona.  (OK, Ottawa has a frost warning tonight, so maybe second most after warm weather.)

OK, this blog post is going to be short to setup the next series of posts where I will justify the statements around the differences.  Again, what I am about to list here are the “non-obvious” differences between software intended to run the business vs software to help manage the business.

Drum roll please.

1) The data required for (and generated from) software which helps run the business is significantly more – in fact, often orders of magnitude more – than required for software to management the business.

2) The user interface flexibility and generalized customizations for software to run the business is significantly less than those required to manage the business.

3) The software required to run the business in particular departments/functions needs to be specialized for that function; software to manage the business can only be truly effective if it is one software application for all aspects of the business.

OK, at this point you might be anyone on the spectrum from “Duh, no kidding, Munroe” to “What is he smoking?”  In any case, these statements are deserving of blog posts on their own.  In fact, the third topic may take a number of blog posts because it is both so important and so not the conventional thinking (if the mess of software suites people are buying is any indication).

So, there you have it, my first roadmap for future blog postings.

’til the data conversation … Kirk