Since the age of twenty (I'm thirty-five next month) I've been involved in the business of business software. The kind of software that doesn't get talked about very often, the type of software that isn't allowed to share the limelight with the more glamorous business apps like the world-famous word processor or spreadsheet, and that decadent rockstar johnny-come-lately app, the enterprise email system.
No, the business software I'm involved with anonymously goes about it's day printing your security pay-slips, balancing your books, making sure your stock lines remain fulfilled and keeping an eye on your budgets.
The first generation business apps were pretty simple, archaic affairs and largely designed to automate existing manual processes. And they only just about managed to do that. But ever since version 1.0, down the various iterations and re-designs, those apps have become gradually cleverer and smarter, they can now do things that no manual process could hope to replicate today. In other words they have evolved, it's the name of the game in a competitive market.
And it's not unreasonable to expect that this process of evolution will continue and customers will upgrade from one version to the next to gain benefit from the latest business-focused technological advancement. But most business apps are not designed by academics or Harvard grads. Mostly they're designed by software guys, not
just
software guys I should add, but software guys who understand business pretty well. And also, whilst most contemporary business apps are pretty good at what they do, ultimately it's how they're used that determines the overall success or failure of the business that's using them. Garbage in, garbage out as they used to say.
However, I can see a time in the future when business applications will become state-of-the-art in a true business sense. In a sense that some applications will eventually evolve to incorporate best-practice business design. The world's best business brains will be recruited at huge expense to help develop and design killer business management strategies into the apps themselves, they'll no longer just be dumb but comprehensive calculators. They'll prescribe the best day-to-day business decisions, your business performance and success will be almost clinically guaranteed.
Then it'll be a case of which killer set of Harvard-strength business processes will be incorporated into your apps. "Are you on version 1.5 Harvard Killer Business Model or the newer 1.6 edition? I heard that version 1.5 had a major bug which manifested itself in the form of random overspending on your overseas recruitment budget every other quarter". If you're very lucky - or just rich enough to be able to afford it - your system will come with the latest iteration of the world-class process model, licenced by the London School of Economics and based upon the Barnes & McDonald Theory of Wholesale Inventory Forecast Management that's been academically proven to reduce and maintain your stock-holding to previously unfeasibly low levels whilst still maintaining 100% customer supply efficiencies.
Your business will no longer rely upon its local, human, dysfunctional and under-educated management team to plot your course on a day-to-day, quarter by quarter basis. It'll be like Viagra for business.