Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 10
Customization
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Customers have been moving toward nonproprietary shared solutions for
quite some time. This trend is primarily due to increasing costs and the
realization that there is “no economic benefit to having proprietary appli-
cations,” as Professor Nicholas G. Carr, a former executive editor of the
, says. In many business areas, applications exist
that, with proper customization, can be made to work effectively and
efficiently for any organization. This chapter focuses on customization and
the customized approach to application development and implementation.
Customization refers to incorporating changes in the software that is
already available as a product. While it may be true that only a few
products offer genuine customization, many products allow some config-
uration, enhancement, or personalization — features that are useful and,
at times, sufficient for the customer to get an improved fit to their
environment. Often, the differences between customization and configu-
ration appear to be a matter of degree. Remember that the scale, issues,
and opportunities provided by a customized solution can rarely be
achieved through configuration alone.
Customization is the ability to make
Harvard Business Review
substantial
modifications to
pre-
created
software
without access to the original source code
using the
customization tools
provided with the product.
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