For my fellow RCE fans.
A recent post by @utaylor
Where he specifically mentions the toll that Epicor’s seemingly never ending quest to break things that were working previously with every cloud update is having on his professional credibility.
Trust in the system is an essential element for success, and critical for getting people to use Epicor, and I mean really use it, to it’s fullest potential.
I was fortunate to learn about the importance of system trust early in my career. At my first job as a BA, in 2009, it was a small company but the owner fully understood the critical role system trust plays in the successful use of that system. We were not large enough to consider the use of an enterprise level ERP, but with software called ‘Stone Edge Order Manager’ and Access DBs and Macros, we were able to duct tape together a system that was able to maintain an order defect rate of < 2%.
During this development/transition to the new system, there came the phase, which was new to me at the time, but now I realize is a constant, all the time, everywhere, of anxiety related to adopting the new system. Specifically users giving up control of things they previously did themselves, to the system.
In response to this expressed anxiety, the owner would simply say ‘We have a system in place to manage that, we either need to trust it, or get rid of it’
Where does this anxiety come from?
Is it ego? Is it difficult to admit the system can do certain things better than you can?
Is it fear of being obviated? If I let the system do this thing, what will I do? What use will I have?
Maybe, but ultimately I think it boils down to how much people trust the system to do what it is meant to do.
I think most people will agree that it is a hard enough task to get a bug free system to perform reliably enough to convince everyone that it will work the way they expect, 100% of the time.
For those of us who have taken the leap to move to Kinetic SaaS, we are so far from operating in a bug free system I forget what it’s like at this point. Every new update introduces new things that I have to apologize for, work around, chips away at peoples trust in me, and by extension, the system I am trying to get people to use.
I get that updates can come with some unexpected consequences. This is not what we are living through right now. I have been doing this a long time and never in my life did I imagine I would be trying to advocate for a system where clicking the print button was a roll of the dice. I am running out of breath.
