Customization makes the difference

Customization makes the difference

Nowadays, no business could ignore the benefits of information technology in their management activities, particularly the use of accounting software and business management software. The diversity of businesses in both size and operational areas creates extremely diverse needs of the accounting software and business management software. The reasons for the diversity can be summarized as follows:

• Field of Operation: For example: Demand management of commercial enterprises will differ from manufacturing enterprises, and service businesses and services, and differ from multi-sectoral businesses.
• Lines of business: Production businesses of garment will have different management needs compared to fishery production businesses. The more lines of business, the more different management needs, and the number of business lines in the economy is very huge. Businesses of multiple business fields and business lines even have more complex business management need to meet their business model. This creates extremely diverse needs of the accounting software and business management software.
• Scale of Business: Number of enterprises in the economy is very large (the estimated number of Vietnamese businesses in 2010 is 500,000 businesses). Different enterprises have different business scales and over time, their scales grow.
  This  also creates more diverse management needs.
• Concentrated or Distributed activities: Businesses can operate in one centralized location, however the majority of large companies have operations spread out in different geographical areas (North, Central, South, provinces ...). Management Models of centralized or distributed operations also create different needs in accounting software and business management software.
• Way of managing the enterprise: Although two businesses might have the same scale and the same field of operation, the difference in management style between them (Eg: demand detailed information or general management data...) will create different demands for accounting software and business management software.
• Staff’s level of IT skills: The higher the level of IT staff in the enterprise, the more complex and advanced software that enterprise will have demand for. However, in enterprises with low level staff, the simple and easy-to-use software seems to be more effective than other modern software. Computer skills of the staffs can’t always be improved (eg due to age…).

• Business Culture: Business Culture affects the leadership and management style in companies. These styles are not easy to change overnight, especially in the direction of advance and modernity. This creates the need for different levels of management software by management qualifications at different levels of the business. Low-level management will require appropriate software (eg, simple, easy to use), it will prove to be more effective than other advanced giant software.

• Other reasons: There are many other factors that influence the management needs of companies like: following the trend to use software (eg companies may rush to buy a software that has been acknowledged with high ranking in a poll without paying attention to the actual situation of the enterprise) ...

Diverse management needs of enterprises leads to Customization

In fact very diverse needs above set heavy duty for constructors and developers of accounting software and business management software. The question is: Is there a multi-functional software that can meet the diverse needs of all businesses? In our opinion, whether or not then surely all software developers want to make their software be able to achieve that  goal!

Due to the diverse management needs of businesses, a supplier of accounting software and business management software (eg: ERP) can focus on a targeted customers group and find ways to satisfy them. For example, there are accounting programs which only oriented for small businesses, or just driven into the field of financial accounting. However, even in a narrow target customer group, the needs of different enterprises are still very diverse and the software still need to have certain characteristics to customize and adapt to the businesses, except for extremely tiny business group. In the viewpoint of the EFFECT, we believe that the accounting software and business management software (such as ERP) need to have the characteristics of customization meet customer demands, even for a narrow group of customers. We call this Customization.

The concept of Customization

According to EFFECT:

Customization is defined as the ability to change, add, remove the input parameters and the ability to change, add, remove the output parameters according to the management requirements; or in other words, the adaptation ability of the software to suit specific management requirements in the different stages of businesses.

So Customization characteristic is generated with an aim to meet the extremely diverse needs of businesses. How can we define a software product to be customized? The software can be customized somewhat, as defined above, to a high or low extend, or not customized at all. Software without add or remove-input- interfaces is not known as customized whether the software has its interface to revise the output reporting system. Without Input Customization, Output customization‘s will promote very low efficiency.

From the above concept of customization, there are many other concepts such as: Customized Software (software with customization), Standard Software (software without customization), the input customization (the ability to change, add, remove the input parameters - usually the business system input), the output customization (the ability to change, add, remove the output parameters - usually reporting system), The complete customization (everything on the software can be changed). Change (or Customize) the software (based on Customization properties of the software to modify the software to suit specific management requirements or to achieve a certain function at the request of the company).

Regarding the Customization, you can see even the Ministry of Finance also have the Decision relating to the criteria to choose accounting software. It provides that "accounting software must be able to modify reporting systems", which means that the accounting software for businesses need to have the output Customization properties.

Customization is the only way for the accounting software and business management software to meet the diverse needs of businesses. Some accounting software or ERP refers to the concept of argument. In our opinion, this is another way of Customization characteristics, and different software will have different level of customization.

Identify the Customized accounting software

You can identify an Accounting Program to be or not to be customized based on the following parameters:

• The software you are considering have interface to add, remove, modify input data or not (Input Customization)
• The software you are considering have interface to add, remove, modify output data or not (Output Customization)
• The software you are considering has ever managed to meet the needs of many different businesses in different fields of operation, lines of business and different scales or not.
• The viewpoint of software vendors, whether they are willing to change the software to meet the unique needs of your business or not? If not, the software you're considering is definitely not the customized software. Additionally, there are companies willing to tailor their software to meet your requirements but this approach may be more cost-consuming for both parties and is not a wise solution compared to using Customized software.
• The software you are considering has ever to met the needs of a relatively large business before? For example: An enterprise with accounting department of about 10 people or more. If not, software you are considering is certainly not customized software because most of the relatively large businesses always choose Customized software solutions instead of the costly tailoring solution.

You should try to require software vendors to modify something or make some changes on the accounting software, for example: the new input or a new report form. If this can’t be done, the software you are considering is definitely not the customized software.

Customized and Standard Software from the perspective of software developers

You have compared the differences in the ability to meet the needs of diverse businesses between Customized software and Standard software. But you have not seen it from the perspectives of the software designers and programmers.

The first thing we want to say is the customized software and standard software are different in the program foundation elements, from database structure, the distribution of data tables (tables), the number of data fields for the table, how to allocate data storage for the operating section ... to the design of the interface (more or less, integrated or not ...) and the functionality of the software.

The software designers and developers always have a Customizing thought during the software development process, as this is the number one priority and they are willing to sacrifice some software features (not basic) in order to meet the general requirements through changing (customizing) the program based on the Customized nature of the software without programming. In contrast to Standard software, developers are targeting their software to achieve a defined goal or satisfy a defined model and software development oriented generalization requirements. For accounting software, the software features of the simulated system should follow the accounting practice, and software development oriented information processing system. So the software is not rigidly fixed in one model but can be customized into a combination of many different models.

Another question is whether the Standard software can be reprogrammed to become Customized software? We believe that this can not be done for following reasons:

• Due to fundamental differences on the basis of two types of software, Standard software should not be changed to Customized software. Doing this is equivalent to building a new software and remove the old one. This work is too costly and not financially feasible, especially the thinking of Standard software developers still can not overnight switch to the thinking of Customized software developers.
• Objectives of Software development companies is not necessarily the customized software because the Standard software still remain its own advantages compared with the Customized software (see at the end of this article). Especially when the software company focuses on selling cheap software for small businesses in large quantities to achieve sales goals and profitability.

Which enterprises need Standard software and which enterprises need Customized software?

The selection of Standard software or Customized software now becomes a big question. Choosing Standard or Customized software depends heavily on the thinking and perspectives of business leaders. Because the price of Customized software is often much higher than that of Standard software (for the customization to business requirement), for very small businesses (under 50 employees) there is low demand for Customized Software, and applying Standard software is a reasonable plan.

It is easy to see that the customized software is suitable for businesses wishing to use the software in administration work. The larger the companies are, the more pronounced the demand is. However, many small business leaders with a good vision refer to Customized software as a reasonable choice. They recognize that the business will grow (in 1-2 years), and the size of the business will grow and demand for management will inevitably rise soon. At that time, the cost of time and money to convert to the Customized software is even more expensive than buying the software now. Or at least they should choose the Standard software that may be more compatible for upgradation from a software vendor as EFFECT.

The software also has the advantage of still being standardized, simple, easy to use and suitable for user objects have weak computer skills. Development costs of software vendors is still very low, mainly manual time - can not modify or customize the software because it is the unity between customers and software vendors - and therefore the price of the software is still low compared with the software. These are clear advantages of Standard software that the software can not be. The qualified business professional can also choose weak Standard software because they do not know the requirements set out separately and usually accept all that is available on the software, try to learn from it and apply in his work.