A Manager's Guide To Integrated Software

THEY MACRO! THEY MASK! THEY MERGE! SOME OF THEM EVEN DO WINDOWS . . . BUT CAN THEY HELP YOU RUN YOUR BUSINESS?

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The age of integrated business software dawned, softly, in the fall of 1982. That there was no blare of trumpets seems odd, since joining together the basic tools of small-business management within one package, on a single floppy disk, was a breakthrough of dramatic consequence. Nevertheless, the world's first microcomputer program that was able to meld a spreadsheet, a database, graphics, telecommunications, and a word processor received from its creator, Context Management Systems, just about the the dullest name imaginable: Context MBA. The management then proceeded, inexplicably, to squeeze its promotion purse as if the product were just another adding machine.

Hardly had the sky lightened in the West, however, when a second, similarly multiplicitous program emerged back East, this one enticingly called 1-2-3. (Unlike MBA, 1-2-3 lacked "4" -- word processing.) Lotus Development Corp. booked magazine pages as if there were no tomorrow, and boosted their 1-2-3 to the heavens. And Lotus, largely on the strength of having sold some quarter of a million copies in the first year, is now a celebrated $360-million public corporation. Putting it discreetly, Context Management is not.

Now a fresh wave of perhaps 20 self-proclaimed integrated software programs has crashed on our shores. (And, all too often, crash they do.) Reversing a trend, the new wave can hardly be called consumer-friendly. In fact, it is often downright consumernasty. This time the packages come not in three or four sectors, but in five, six, and even seven. Since each deals with far more data than its predecessors, each requires far more complicated keyboard commands than before, throwing intuition -- the anticipatable progression that makes software accessible to the laity -- to the winds. Nor, unfortunately, do the tutorial texts that ostensibly serve to explain how everything comes together yield more than the vaguest of direction.

This clearly is not a profitable course for the 5,000 or so companies that are estimated to constitute the microcomputer software industry. Last year, the accounting firm of Arthur Young & Co. studied microcomputer usage in the top 1,500 Fortune companies and found that almost two-thirds of the responding executives used microcomputers infrequently, or not at all. The executives, it seems, couldn't figure out how to make the things work. No doubt good old American enterprise will come to the rescue of this expensive absurdity. In fact, roving bands of human tutors are even now training executives at upwards of $400 per day. Even so, the executive will hardly learn how to get deeply inside one of these integrated systems unless he or she buys one, and buying one intelligently has become nearly impossible.

From on high, the systems look much like one another. But beneath their surfaces lie twists and turns as unlikely -- and as marvelous -- as an Escher staircase. Some suffer severe faults in precisely the places where others excel. Indeed, the potential of integrated systems has yet to be reached, not for want of technology, but because system designers simply have not polished their products in the rush to get there first with the most. The result is that, without reliable advice, would-be customers can't hope to sort out the particulars. And where do you go for reliable advice? Certainly not to the outsides of the packages, nor to double-spread advertisements, nor to cursory reviews in magazines. Nor, least of all, to computer stores.

In such a situation -- the situation being crudely defined at $600 to $700 a pop -- most managers will go for the safe play: Lotus, the producer that already has met with acceptance. Thus it falls to the other software companies in the race to become recognized on their own merits. But how? With 1-2-3 as the best-selling business software in the history of the world, Lotus has such a wide lead that even to try to catch up requires spending millions of dollars of promotion funds that obscure younger companies just don't have. Nor, with IBM Corp. now in the arena and with most public software stocks still downtrodden, are venture capitalists any too eager to help them out.

Moreover, the potential market has grown more savvy and computer-wise in two years. It is possible that the novelty of integrated applications has worn thin enough to call for a second look. Businesspeople ought to ask if they really need such marginally distinguishing features as exploding 3-D pie charts, calendars that keep track of lunch appointments, or spreadsheets with enough room to "what-if" the universe.

What, after all, is wrong with stand-alone software standing alone? A word processor to handle mailing from its own self-contained database of addresses, a database to monitor customer activity, a spreadsheet to model financial projections, and a graphics program if you really want to show off. Why would you need to integrate any of it?

One industry answer -- and it is unassailable -- is that piecemeal acquisition of high-performance, dedicated software, written to accomplish a sole purpose, often costs more than an entire integrated system. For instance, the latest all-inclusive-package version of the best-selling word processor, MicroPro International Corp.'s WordStar 2000 Plus, retails for a whopping $595; not to be outdone, Ashton-Tate's newest database manager, dBase III, goes for an extra-whopping $100 more. And, of course, neither can communicate with another computer on its own nor follow a customized sequence of instructions triggered by a keystroke, as most integrated programs can. Not only do the parts of these integrated systems approach standalone power, but a degree of togetherness is thrown in for free. Besides, even if they fall short of expectation, the integrated systems have little to be ashamed of: Standalones have loads of room to improve, as well.

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