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The Customization Epidemic

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Good news: The IT boom is here to stay. For four years,  India's IT

market has grown at 27%. The recent Dataquest-IDC Megaspender survey shows that

over 200 top IT-spending enterprises invested an average of Rs 34 crore each on

IT last year.

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Better news: IT has spread. Across verticals, well beyond  just banking

and telecom; in government, in PSUs, in smaller businesses.

This special issue profiles projects for PCQuest's IT Implementation Awards.

From e-gov to insurance, from meter-reading to tele-medicine, there's a huge

range in these 250 projects.

I see this vast variety with mixed feelings. Yes, it spells a booming

domestic IT market where 40%, well over $6 billion, was services. On the other

hand, there's a problem in there, one that affects rapid deployment and scaling

up.

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The customization epidemic.

It's so visible in e-gov projects. Each Indian state creates projects from

scratch, from consulting to pilots...India is a graveyard of hundreds of pilot

projects. Some worked, but few were scaled up, let alone replicated.

That's also rampant among midsize businesses. The larger ones have been

there, done that. They deployed huge custom projects, and figured there's no way

to maintain them, or enhance features three years later. They learnt the value

of standard platforms, modules that inter-operate.

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Smaller businesses often can't find, or afford, the solutions they think they

need, and walk the custom route. Often, that's in-house development. And then

you have projects that are person-dependent and undocumented. There is no easy

way to scale, upgrade or even migrate later.

What do you do if you're a small or midsize business, looking for a

technology solution-and an SAP or Oracle or Microsoft doesn't seem to fit your

budget, or even your needs?

Look harder. The big names have SMB products today, suited to midsize

companies in India. You may find even those expensive. Yet...a from-the-scratch

custom project may appear cheap, but can end up costing three times more (and

taking years longer) than first estimates.

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Prasanto K Roy



Chief Editor

Compromise on features. Feature-creep kills deployments, where stakeholders

get greedier, and keep demanding features. If an off-the-shelf package will do

50% of what you want it to, but will be off and running in three months, take

it, over the 'perfect' project that will take two years-and may be obsolete by

the time you get it going. The package will also have a larger user base, and

hence support, peer reviews and inputs. Future updates and



scalability are bonuses.

Third: change your business processes. Adapt to the packaged application, for

it may capture current best practices. Don't insist on customization to your

business process.

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A 'package' won't fit every need, especially in a country as vast and diverse

as ours. But it's a great starting point.

There is learning in a long custom project. But it's rarely captured. One

project covered in this issue was an open-source workflow/ERP built within a

college over five years. The students' learning was great, but it would be rare

for this to be retained in the institute, documented, and built upon. In a

business, the opportunity cost is horrific: the thousands of man hours spent

could be put to productive use with an existing platform to start from.

So look really hard at what's available in the market. Even if it only partly

addresses your needs. And stand on the shoulders of giants.

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