Custom solutions with shrink-wrap dreams

I’ve been involved in the business of research administration through the provision of software and services since the old Webridge days and I can honestly say it’s a great place to spend my time. I’ve often been struck, however, with the wide variety of approaches all aimed at meeting the same set of compliance and business objectives. As much as the market is shaped by regulation and compliance guidelines, each institution is able to determine on their own how best to meet the internal business demands while remaining compliant. I recall, many years ago, a visit to an institution where there was distinct pride in fostering a “cowboy culture”. I applaud the desire to innovate and build a better mousetrap as there is always need to improve and adapt to an ever changing world. However, this does make life interesting in a number of ways.

As a person responsible for providing solutions for today’s research administration needs, delivering to a moving target with unique institutional preferences provides some interesting challenges. We constantly wrestle with the tension between a robust product and a completely custom implementation. Ideally, those two worlds can peacefully coexist but the reality is that these needs are often contradictory. It’s at the convergence of these two worlds where I spend a great deal of my time.

For many years, we have provided reference implementations that we called “Starter Sites” and these met a real need by accelerating the delivery of your new solution. Even after they are used to kick off work on a new custom site, Starter Sites continue to serve as a reference, showcasing ongoing advancements in the solution. This approach, however, assumes that all deployed sites are fully custom and ongoing maintenance to the site must be carefully managed through detailed comparison of how both starter and customer sites evolve in order to assess how new features and bug fixes might be incorporated. As time has gone on, there has been an increasing expectation that this task of “staying current” get easier. This is a goal that I share but it’s a difficult walk to walk.

This is one of those perpetual goals because complete victory implies eliminating the need or desire to customize delivered solutions and this just isn’t today’s reality. Each institution has unique requirements that, in many cases, are not supported through standard product options and extension points. While we continue to learn from each new customer project and incorporate newly discovered patterns back in the products, there will always be a need to support the ability to implement customizations where the institutional requirements aren’t directly met by the delivered solution. The configuration capabilities we’ve built into the Click® Portal platform are in direct support of this need and a key capability that enables you to achieve your goals.

How do we achieve “shrink-wrap” goals in a custom world?

I’m stretching the reality of understanding a bit when I say “Shrink-wrap” but there are elements of a shrink-wrapped software model that are worth using for this discussion.

In the world of shrink-wrapped software there are a set of assumptions:

1. New enhancements are delivered through simple to install upgrades
2. Unique business processes and usage patterns may need to be adjusted to work with the product
3. Bug fixes are delivered in easy to install Hot-Fixes
4. An array of options are presented to accommodate common preferences
5. There is no ability/need to customize the delivered software

In the research administration market, there is a wider variety of needs that drive a different set of assumptions:

1. The delivered product meets all or most of the local institutional needs
2. The delivered product can be altered to meet unique and local business requirements
3. Enhancements and the bug fixes require custom development

What poses a real challenge is when expectations are pulled from both lists. It’s very difficult to deliver on the goal of simple upgrades into a custom site without the expectation that custom development is required. We have been successful with this when it comes to the continual advancement of the Click® Portal Platform. The new frontier is in determining a path that will incrementally improve our ability to be just as successful with the business solutions as well.

I’m proud to say that we enable you to choose to place your implementation at any point along the spectrum of fully custom to completely standard.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this. As members of the Click family, your current implementations represent the full choice spectrum, from completely custom to using the products as delivered and all points in between. Where do you put yourself on that spectrum? Where do you want to be? What can we do to help you get there?

Cheers!