Top 5 FAQ for Large-Scale Solutions for Small Enterprises: a Brief How (and Why) To

Chet (Oraclenerd) asked me to write a guest post for his blog recently. My first post is called “Large-Scale Solutions for Small Enterprises: a Brief How (and Why) To” and includes a link back here for a few FAQs. Here they are:

1. Are you making this stuff up?

I get this question more often outside of Education & Research industry events. No, I am not making it up; we do what we say we do — since 1999. Check out our cred from Oracle or come visit or grab me at Alliance.

2. Are you doing it wrong?

I ask myself this question every day. We are not perfect (who is?), but we get the job done. Our measures of success are pretty basic: we pay people, we keep our systems up, our people do their jobs, we pay our vendors, and so on. We validate our practices by joining a statewide group of project managers — we provide a support system for each other and make sure that we aren’t ‘doing it wrong.’

3. Do you have many single points of failure?

We do; but we also have a flexible, committed, and resourceful staff. We have been in production with our PeopleSoft applications since 1999; we do what we can to mitigate risk while focusing on getting the job done however we can. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

4. Why are you using a large solution for a small enterprise?

I covered this question in the Oraclenerd post:

“A colleague from a large university asked me recently why, for an organization our size, we did not use a much smaller solution (I think he suggested QuickBooks, +1 for snark). It is a fair question with a simple answer. While our organization is smaller than a larger university, the complexity of our business requirements is comparable. For example, our payroll contains all of the variations of a larger university: full time and part time staff, faculty contracts of every imaginable period of time, student employees, contingent workers, and so on. To use a smaller solution to handle that complexity would require a larger and far more specialized payroll staff, at least some custom application development, and a different IT support structure. All of those things are costly. Instead, we let Oracle worry about providing the functionality to meet those requirements, we let our payroll staff adjust their business processes around that functionality (we are mean that way), provide general IT support from our small pool of staff, and leverage our user group for strategic direction and answers to tough questions. So, to answer my colleague’s question, we use a large solution like Oracle PeopleSoft to accomplish our mission: to maximize functionality and minimize cost.”

5. Are you on call all of the time?

Yes and no. Having a small staff means employing pretty vicious triage. If payroll is in jeopardy, if we cannot process online payments, if AP checks will not print — then yes, I am on call and those people always know how to find me. If a minor report won’t run, if you can’t remember what a push button does, if your process runs in 3 minutes instead of 2:45, etc. — we will get to it when we get to it.

More questions? Ask away in the comments.

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