Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.10 2011.04.01 Takahashi Minoru

Adoption rates and statistics aren't much help when evaluating systems

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


“I heard that about XX companies nationwide have implemented this kind of system.
and I’ve heard that about XX companies nationwide have implemented it—should we implement it too?”
I often receive this kind of question from company presidents.
The answer usually ends up being “No.”


To be honest, there are no statistics
(1) Sales pitches
(2) National policy (Do they really want to strengthen the nation’s capabilities, or are they just doing the bidding of Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NTT Data?)
(3) Academic circles (disputes among bigwigs at universities and among critics)
and are merely being exploited for one of the above purposes.
and for company presidents and the rest of us in the business world,
it often has little to do with us for the time being.


Employees (especially those in IT) tend to blindly trust this kind of data.
If the bottom right corner of the graph says “Excerpted from the website of such-and-such government agency,” it’s incredibly effective.
They’ll just copy and paste it into their pitch to the president (or their proposal),
or play right into the hands of the systems salespeople, which is a real headache,
but please, CEO, try to judge matters calmly.


After all, those bar charts and pie charts
"across all industries" and
"covering all industries" and
—in other words, they’re manipulated statistics on a scale that’s far too broad.


As for whether your company really needs that system,
"you’ll know just by looking at your customers’ faces."


If you’re unsure, consult an accountant or the Chamber of Commerce and Industry to
"companies in the same industry"
“as similar in scale as possible”
“with a business area as close as possible”
you should be able to make a sound judgment
I believe you’ll be able to make a sound decision.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

------------------------------

■ Previous / Next Column ■

＜＜＜ Next Column Vol.11 - Hired an external consultant, the company improved — happy ending? 2011.06.01

＞＞＞ Previous Column Vol.9 - The smaller the system, the greater the chance of success 2011.03.01

Back to Column List