CASE STUDIES
Staff
Case Studies
Sleep Like a Baby
Keeping Everyone in the Loop
Houston We Have a Problem
Keeping Everyone in the Loop

Walking out of the project meeting I suddenly realize the data element we just agreed to revise is used in other processes around the company. Before we had Entire, I would have just committed myself to a multiple week nightmare as I tried to track down all the places it was used and who had to be contacted. Now I simply access the application I'm working with, identify the data element and Entire responds with a list of all the potentially affected applications. I had no idea that system used that data!

I describe the proposed change, and instruct Entire to alert all the affected parties. Entire posts an alert on their dashboards and sets up an entry in the Issue Log of my application to track the responses. I then link the issue to my dashboard so I can monitor the progress of assembling replies. It still required some negotiating, but Entire enabled me to complete the assessment in a small portion of the time it would have taken in the past.

 

Many companies are furious about the bug-ridden, pricey and over-engineered systems that they bought during the bubble era and are doing their best to switch to simple, off-the-shelf software, offered in "enterprise-resource planning" packages and the like.

"Does IT Matter",
The Economist, April 1, 2004