Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Ridiculous Redundancy

I bet there isn’t a company out there that hasn’t had this problem.  You have a Customer that is also a Vendor.  Or how about an Employee that is both a Customer and a Vendor?  If employees purchase products or equipment they are customers, and if employees are reimbursed for expenses they are vendors.  This means you will have redundant information in the different applications.

The problem arises in trying to maintain consistent and timely information about these Companies/Employees throughout the various applications.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I found a name, an address, or phone number in one application that was not exactly the same as in another application.  There is a tremendous amount duplication of effort, and it is nearly impossible to maintain. 

With a little effort from developers, common related data could be shared among the different applications.  Linking this data is not impossible.  Accuracy of information would improve, and hours of maintenance would be saved.

In this day and age it’s just plain ridiculous that this hasn’t already been done.  There is no reason for it, EXCEPT for the fact that most developers are just plain LAZY!  They just repackage the same useless, antiquated software under a new name, increase the price, and give it a new name.