Riddle

If you had to travel from New York City to San Francisco, what’s faster, a jet or a car?

♩♫ Jeopardy music ♫♩

Right now you’re thinking, “The obvious answer is “jet”. But if that’s the right answer, this wouldn’t be a riddle.”

That’s very observant on your part. The correct answer is you don’t have enough information. The jet is only faster if there are trained pilots flying it. What if the choice was you driving or you flying the jet? Unless you are a jet pilot, you would choose the car; because the car would get you there the quickest.

The jet has the potential to be much faster than a car, but it doesn’t mean it will be the fastest choice to get from one coast to the other. Here’s another take-away: Just because you can’t fly the jet, doesn’t mean it won’t fly.

How is any of this related to ERP? We constantly see companies manage areas of their business with spreadsheets instead of the built-in functionality of ERP. They do this because they aren’t trained in the ERP functionality; so they use what they know – spreadsheets. They use the car instead of the jet because it gets them to where they want to be. It may not be pretty, but it gets them there.

That may seem just fine, but next time you are in the car think about this: What if your competition uses a jet?

Related: Are you Getting Everything Out of Your ERP?

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