It's a shame there are so many good salesman out there or should that be it's a shame there are so many naive customers for them to feed on!

One constant battle that I come up against is based on a reticence to build a bespoke application for a business.  As an example let's look at a recent conversation I had with a senior (non-technical) manager at one of our clients.  It started with the complaint that we shouldn't be building a bespoke CRM solution when there were so many 'off the shelf' solutions that would do the job.

If only life was that simple. 

If you were starting with a clean sheet of paper and a well defined business model with fixed requirements I may well side with the pre-built product argument.  In this case we weren't.  We had a painful legacy system at the core of the business to integrate with and a poor business strategy that led to ever changing requirements as the business lurched from one challenge to the next.

My opponent even quoted the old metaphor 'if I needed a car I wouldn't build one from scratch'.  How true... unfortunately it wasn't a car they needed, more a custom kitchen and they wouldn't get what they wanted without some thought and effort.

Anyway, they have their kitchen now, sorry CRM solution, and it's well on its way to being recognised as best in the sector.  When new requirements appear it's upgraded by a team of readily available contracted software developers with standard software skills.  No waiting for supplier roadmaps to be realised, no additional license costs and best of all ... no salesman's patter.  Just software development - carefully designed and delivered without fuss.

Have a good day, destroy a myth.