True story. A client asked us to build a Salesforce
opportunity object with 378 fields. Then
they asked why nobody was using the system.
I’m still not entirely sure what
they expected.
Have To Have vs. Want to
Have
Over-customization in ERP almost
never starts with bad intentions. It
starts with a requirements process where everyone in the room gets to add
things to the list and nobody is allowed to take things off.
Sales wants to capture everything
about every deal. Operations wants every
field they might ever need. Finance adds
twelve more just in case. By the time
you’re done you’ve got a system that theoretically does everything and
practically does nothing because nobody will touch it.
The discipline I’ve used on every
project for 22 years is simple. Build
for what you have to have, not what you want to have. Go live.
Then the system will show you what you actually need — and it turns out
to be about a third of what you thought before you started using it.
The Ghosts
The second story is the one that
really stays with me. We had a client
moving off a system they hated. And over
the course of six months we built their new system. We told them repeatedly that we were
recreating too much of what they had.
They disagreed.
We went live. Within a few weeks, the same problems they
had with the old system just reappeared.
Like ghosts. Because we’d built
the house on the same broken foundation.
Same objects, same logic, same complexity, just shinier.
We spent the next six months
undoing what we’d spent six months building.
That’s what over-customization
really is. It’s not a field count
problem. It’s using a new system to
preserve old thinking.
Why This Matters for Odoo
Specifically
Odoo is built to be
configured. That’s one of the primary
reasons we use it. The platform is
flexible enough to fit the way you actually run your business without requiring
the kind of deep custom development that turns into technical debt you can
never get out from under.
But that flexibility cuts both
ways. Odoo will let you build whatever
you want. Our job is to make sure what
you build is actually what you need.
Watch the clip above. Then reach us at blackirongroup.com/contact
if you want to talk about what a clean implementation looks like.