In this short dialogue, two speakers discuss how many businesses struggle with fragmented, outdated IT systems. They reference internal survey data showing the top three pain points: disparate systems, manual processes, and outgrown software. These issues lead to poor visibility, data consolidation challenges, and stalled growth. The conversation highlights a common mindset of treating system upgrades as an afterthought—delaying action until a crisis forces change. They also note a pattern of over‑procurement and cost overruns, where companies buy more than they need and later discard excess assets. Both speakers describe how these problems snowball, eventually compelling leaders to finally consider a new, unified system. The overall tone is conversational and cautionary, urging businesses to recognize early signs and proactively address system fragmentation before it hampers further growth.
The fact that you grew up with disparate systems and you sort of try to kick the can down the road a little bit. As a business owner myself, I kind of understand that too.
So if we really look at some data that we actually run as a value consulting team, we survey our own customers and we realise actually the top 3 items are disparate systems, manual processes, and companies that have outgrown the software that they have. Visibility, business growth, they find it difficult to grow with the existing system because it's all disparate. They have consolidation issues, like trying to merge the information together and make sense of the data that they have. So what does the numbers really infer? I think it always begins with the system being an afterthought. Oh, never mind. It's always, let's shove it to the next, maybe next year. Right. Maybe next 2 years later, maybe when we have grown, maybe we have IPO, then we will probably think about a better system. And it also usually begins with a lack of unified strategy. And the second part is actually getting used to cost overrun. Very strange actually, because— Ken, have you actually met customers that actually over-procured things and then they actually end up throwing away stuff? Writing it off?
You know, usually what they will say is this is the cost of business, right? But of course, I think what happens is if— but then you— then if you take a step back and you say, hey, could I have planned better? Can I predict better? Then you realize actually you don't really need to take it as a norm, right? I think you can find efficiencies. The fact that you grew up with disparate systems and You sort of try to kick the can down the road a little bit. As a business owner myself, I kind of understand that too. Too many things that's on your mind and you find that, you know what, for me to try and solve this now, this is a high cost and maybe I think low impact where I am today. But after a while, this thing gets a little bit worse, it gets a little bigger, it snowballs into something else. Yeah. And then you realize, you know what, I cannot put push this any further, right? This is now I need to do something about it. And that's usually when they start thinking, okay, I have no choice. I got to look for a new system. I have to look for a new way. It starts off with what can we do different? Yeah. Just acknowledging that something isn't right now. And then of course, system, whether system is the solution, that's, that's one part, but at least just saying, hey, you know what, what we're trying to do today isn't going to— it got us here and then it's not going to get us to the next stage, wherever that might be for the company.
