Dave Jenkins

Often I hear that people are getting swamped with the number of applications running around inside the corporate network. There’s the web ecommerce stuff, the wholesale management system, the warehouse management system, the retail POS, some half-assed portal intranet, the EDI talking to the ancient vendors, and all the EDI translators in between. If you squint, you can see the green-screen NCRs and AS400s in the back of the room still chugging away (on coal-fired 220v converters, no doubt). It becomes a zoo very quickly. The longer things are around, the harder this gets.

So, what’s an IT department to do? I know– let’s get an ERP. An ERP will solve everything! Order system out of whack? ERP! Warehouse management out-dated? ERP! Need closer control over your financial data? You bet! ERP!!

I am going to write an ERP, and I am going to name it “Jeebus 5.0″. I named it that for the all-encompasing, sin-forgiving, cause-every-little-ting-gonna-be-alright mission that an ERP will provide for a company. I will give it the 5.0 number because, in general, IT people like nice stable platforms, and shit is usually pretty stable by version 5, right? We’ve all seen companies with no ERP at all, and those who are considering an ERP, those who’ve blundered their way into one, and those who went hog-wild on an ERP, to the point where you needed to go through PeopleSoft just to find the cafeteria. My personal opinion could be boiled down to the following touchpoints:

• An ERP is like any large mammal: safe as long as it has a leash and/or cage that limits the overall range
• ERP stands for ‘Enterprise Resource Planning”, which usually centers around the finances and inventory control. Keep it there (see the first point) and not much further
• If you have a better app to run your website or to run the wiki, then keep the better app– don’t throw it into the ERP just for giggles (beware of sexy ERP saleswomen in low-cut red dresses promising their ERP will do everything)
• An ERP can control the core finances and inventory of a company, but it had better talk nicely with all these other apps that are worth keeping around. “Talk nicely” means something open and free, not .vbs or proprietary codes specific to a single vendor.

So, with those guidelines in place, I’ll start laying out my Db schema this weekend. Look for updates at http://jeebus.sourceforge.net

Someone I know is writing a book titled So You’re on Facebook, Now What? From what I can tell, it centers on how to build a commercial profile on facebook, and how to increase your visibility. Hmmm… I admit to having some doubts about this. We all make money on the stupid Intarweb in some way or another, but it seems to me that the social networks are like parties that progress through stages:

• stage 1: not many people - this might be lame
• stage 2: okay, some people are showing up - let’s stick around and see what happens
• stage 3: wow– there’s some cool people here, and i’m a little drunk. Fun!
• stage 4: rager! holy shit! look how many people are here! We can do anything! (let’s steal ketchup from the fridge and throw it into the street!!!)
• stage 5: waaay too many people. The cops are gonna show up, and people are pushing and shoving, and i can’t hear anything you’re saying right now. This is lame.

MySpace progressed through to stage 5 rather quickly. Facebook is somewhere in stage 4. The problem I have with this book is the purposeful, driven, crass commercial intention of it. Just like that party, imagine the college friend of yours who comes through the crowds and pushes the Red Bull stickers and is trying to get you to buy pre-paid long distance cards. Meh– dork alert. Once the businesses are actively pushing their agendas on the crowd, the sponteneity, the fun interaction, the conversation, the party, begins it’s messy end. The cool kids head for a different darker smokey club, and the only ones left are the hucksters all trying to sell each other something.

I’ve already started to kill all the goofy apps from my facebook. I only check the thing once every 4 days or so now (down from my temp addiction of 2x/day last month). It’s nice to keep a line out to my old friends, and the moment I let it get past that, it’s no better than reality TV or mindless webtrash.

My advice? Be very very careful how you sell your shit on facebook– you may do more damage to your brand than you think.  If the social network angle makes sense (some sort of friend interaction like wish lists or music tastes), maybe.  If you’re just blabbing to the masses, get out.