When contacting a customer for a demonstration of QDV7 , he informed me that it would not be worth it because following careful consideration (!) they finally decided to develop a solution internally on... EXCEL . This decision is a double strategic error for this SME and here is why.
The choice of Excel
Excel has proven itself. Belonging to the Office suite, it accompanies its big friend Word on most business PCs. Present everywhere, it is exploited to the limit in order to integrate the most absurd reflections discussed around the coffee machine.
The software is not to be questioned but rather what each person does with it. A recent study by Ray Panco, professor of computer science project management at the University of Hawaii, showed that 88% of Excel contain wording errors. A quote is a sum of errors, it is well known, but still.
Although it is not efficient, the ubiquity of Excel means that Microsoft's "X-files" still have a bright future ahead of them.
The famous internal development
The second strategic error, which is linked to the first, is to choose to develop such a solution internally. For an industrial SME in question here, but it is also true for a large company, the choice of internal development of a software solution takes the company towards a field of activity which is not its core business. . It will in fact be less efficient in this task than a company whose raison d'être is IT development. The company must focus on its main activity (core competencies).
In the end, the investment will certainly be higher, the solution will take longer to implement and its sustainability will not even be assured because the developers will end up leaving and they will of course not have taken the trouble to document their "mill ".
The other major fault of a specific development is its… specific character. The company will have to cover all the costs of creating this new tool alone: no economy of scale and what is undoubtedly even worse, no sharing of knowledge and the possibility of benefiting from functionalities that we would not have otherwise had. not thought of.
The choice of internal development is not oriented towards the goal sought by the company, namely the creation of value and does not bring it any additional competitive advantage, quite the contrary: this poor allocation of resources will be to the detriment of other more judicious actions.
And that's why estimators and salespeople will once again have to live with a rickety tool and will waste time in front of their computer instead of being at the client's site to get business. Fortunately the competition is smarter, they chose QDV7 …or not.
What to do about this? Relaunch in two years or simply bow out.
