Healthcare Reform and the Maley house

I don't pretend to know how health care reform will affect the country. I doubt anyone knows. Our current system has been built over the last 6 decades and I'll bet there wasn't a soul back in 1950 that could have predicted what health care would look like today.

Anyway, I opened Saturday's mail and (like almost every day) I received another letter from our insurance company. I opened this one and it was about my daughter Annie's recent fall at a school playground where she broke her wrist.

The insurance company wanted to know where the fall happened. Someone else's property? A school (in this case, yes)? I filled out the form and let them know she fell on St Dominic's school playground. Then I started to wonder...are they going to call St Dominic's and ask their insurance company to pay for this? Why did they need to know this information? It couldn't get more routine...4 yr old climbs on playground equipment, falls and uses her arms to break her fall.

After I filled out that form there was another 2 page document filled with legalese about who was going to pay, reimbursement policies etc etc...really I didn't have the time to read it and understand it. It requires a lawyer to tell you what it all means. But they wanted me to sign it and send it back. Why?

If a 4 year old falls and breaks her wrist do insurance companies really chase each other down and fight to see who pays for it? Who pays for that fighting? My guess is we all pay for that fighting.

I didn't sign the second form because frankly I couldn't understand it. I filled out the first form (the one snitching on the local school) and hopefully that will get things paid.

Let's see how things go but I'll bet I haven't heard the last of Annie's broken wrist.

ERP versus Best of Breed - all in one car-bike-scooter-jet?

Would you rather buy two cars, a bike, a scooter and plane tickets when necessary for $50,000 or...would you rather buy an all-in-one Car-Bike-Scooter-Jet (CBSJ) for $1mm?

Sure, it would be nice to have a single mode of transportation for all of your needs but for a $1mm? And would the CBSJ do a better job than say 1) using a fuel efficient car for a commute, 2) a pick-up truck for hauling things and 3) a scooter for the kids to better manage your transportation needs?

ERP vendors will have you believe you should consolidate all of your applications onto one solution - their solution. ERP vendors have duped many an Exec into thinking things would be great if only they consolidated onto a single platform. Don't buy it, it's a mirage and it doesn't work.

World class business operations vary from department to department, country to country and business line to business line. The cadence to which all of these groups march is varied. For example, the General Ledger has seen some change over the years but is still really the same General Ledger used in the 19th century. The supply chain, on the other hand, is a constantly changing beast that is affected by geopolitics, energy prices, new inventions and government legislation - it changes more in a day than the General Ledger changes over 3 decades. How can two functional areas, with drastically different cadences, live together on the same development cycle? They can't...in fact, that's why SAP gave up 10 years and billions of dollars when they scrapped their WMS solution and re-wrote it as a stand alone solution.

For years, we heard from SAP that everything needed to be integrated. Only to find out they were wrong. Very wrong. And many companies paid a heavy price. Best of breed software vendors create highly advanced solutions designed to meet your business goals at the lowest possible cost - period.

Don't buy a CBSJ, it doesn't exist - find an enterprise class best of breed solution designed to help you meet your business goals.