Recently, I watched a large organization make a critical operational decision driven almost solely by IT’s desires and needs. For most organizations, IT is not part of operations. IT is a function that manages the technical infrastructure. So, yes, IT gets involved when your on-premises Print MIS/ERP system goes down due to hardware issues, but they are NOT involved when you need a new custom report or a configuration change due to policy changes in estimating. 

I have said this many times: one of the biggest mistakes made in print businesses is putting their IT departments in charge of Print MIS/ERP decisions and/or implementations. An ERP implementation is 1000% operational. Your Print MIS/ERP is THE system that runs your operations. It is generally the system that tracks order inquiry to invoice. What happens when IT makes the decision to change ERP systems and that change is purely based on what’s important to IT? First let’s review what factors an IT department is interested in. Typically, IT departments want simplicity in the form of reduced security surfaces (the amount of area they must keep secure to prevent hacks, viruses, etc.) and reduced technical debt (the care and feeding of different technologies). These are very good priorities and very important to your company no matter the size.

The issue is that the software systems that you utilize to run your operations cannot be evaluated by IT. Your IT department does not know the specifics about custom manufacturing estimating, order processing, or raw materials inventory tracking. The priority for your operations is the efficient working of your people across estimating, prepress, customer service, production, finishing, shipping, and accounting. IT knows how to keep the systems up that these functional areas utilized, they don’t know how these systems are specifically used.