An ERP, a CRM or an accounting package is built for generic requirements, so it fits any particular organisation imperfectly. That is established in the research, not a complaint. The useful question is which kind of misfit you have, what it costs, and where each function actually belongs.
KhahanA Insights builds tailored business systems. That is the side of this argument we sell, so this study is deliberately hardest on our own end of it. Where tailored systems fail, and they fail often and predictably, that is set out at the same length as everything else. Read the failure section before the rest if you want to test whether this is analysis or a sales document.
The core argument
None of these ten conditions is about headcount or industry. That is the finding: a twelve person trading company and a multinational group can share more conditions with each other than either shares with a competitor of the same size. Select any row or column.
Scroll the grid sideways to reach every profile.
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Diagnose it before you price it
The research separates misfit into six domains, and within each into two types. The distinction is the most useful thing in the literature and it is almost absent from selection processes, because it decides whether the problem can be closed at all. Select a domain, then a type.
Where does it bite?
Which way does it fail?
Not a binary
The choice is usually framed as buy or build. In practice there are five positions along a spectrum, and most organisations should occupy more than one at the same time: commodity functions at one end, distinctive work at the other.
The most common error is choosing a single position for the whole organisation. Payroll and the general ledger almost never justify anything beyond the first two positions. The handful of processes that actually differentiate an organisation rarely survive them.
The argument
The opening check
Claiming an unserved need is the easiest thing in a study to get wrong, and this firm sells into this market, so the claims are tested rather than asserted. The test is not who occupies the space, since no company is named anywhere in this study. It is whether the capability exists in the category at all, and at which tier it is available. Several of these turn out to be served already.
Read this one first
Both ends of the spectrum fail, in different ways and on different timescales. The failures on the right hand side are the ones this firm has a commercial reason to understate, so they are listed first and in the same detail.
The side we sell. Listed first deliberately.
The side that is usually the safer default.
Work it out for one function
Run this for one function at a time, not for the organisation. Payroll and the process you compete on will land in different places, and that is the point. Six questions, about a minute.
Answer for a single named function. Be the sceptic rather than the sponsor: anything short of a confident yes is a no. Nothing is scored, stored or sent anywhere. Most honest answers land at position two, which is the correct result rather than a disappointing one.
Revision record
This study is maintained rather than published once. Corrections will appear here rather than quietly disappearing, including the occasions when checking the work overturns it. This is the first issue, so the record begins here.
Contact us
A framework describes a category. Applying it to a specific organisation, its conditions, its existing estate and what it should do next, is a different piece of work, and that is what we do.
Corrections are equally welcome. This study records what it is unsure about and publishes its revisions in the open, so evidence that changes a conclusion improves the next issue rather than embarrassing this one.
Updates to this study
This is a maintained study, not a fixed document. Corrections are published in the revision record rather than quietly applied. Leave an address and we will tell you when it is revised.
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This study is published as general information and as a contribution to debate. It is written to be useful to people making decisions, which is exactly why the limits below matter.
Published by KhahanA Insights FZ-LLC, Dubai. To the fullest extent permitted by law, no liability is accepted for any loss arising from reliance on this material. Governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates. Corrections and challenges are welcome and will be recorded in the revision record.