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Page 80 GO IT ALONE!
to me and asked what I thought about the proposal. His focus, appropriately, was on the many benefits that this intranet would bring to the firm. My answer illustrates my perspective on how any company, small or large, should think about the services it needs. I agreed that the product produced by the technology company would, in all likelihood, meet 100% of the firm’s needs. I suggested, however, that it would probably take somewhat longer than 9 months (because all software development takes longer to develop than the time budgeted). Also, the intranet would inevitably be out of date the moment it was delivered. As the state of technology advanced, the company was going to discover that it wanted even more sophisticated capabilities, so it would quickly be spending another million dollars for the next set of start-of-the art advances, with the possibility of an ongoing cycle. Because this was a custom effort, the company would also, to a certain extent, be locked into working with this provider, at least for any required support and ongoing maintenance. If another technology supplier developed something dramatically better, the company might not be able to take advantage of this breakthrough. At the same time, the company would not have an intranet for over a year, meaning lost productivity. Remember Michael Doyle’s point that ASP products can often be deployed in days, as opposed to months or years. I proposed an alternative: Approach a firm in the business of providing outsourced intranets. The Fortune 1000 company could employ an off-the-shelf solution at a fraction of the cost of the proposed custom effort through a monthly subscription and have it be up and running within 2 weeks to a month. The company would gain almost a year’s productivity by accepting an out-of-the box service. Yes, it was certainly true that the intranet the company would deploy immediately would have only about 60% of the firm’s wish list of features, as compared
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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