Computers can do amazing things, but in fact, they’re only good at a few things.  Of course, the things that they’re good at, they’re really good at, and fast.  On the flip side, the things that they’re bad at, they’re really bad at, but hey, they’re fast!

The Good:

Storing information, displaying information, adding numbers and deciding if one number is bigger than another.  Everything else they do falls out of these abilities.  Want to sort a list?  It’s just a series of questions – is this entry bigger than that entry?  Do this a few billion times a second and you can sort some pretty impressive lists.  Want to find a word in a large document?  Read through the document very quickly and highlight the matches.  Or better yet, have on hand a presorted index of all the words in the document and then just look it up.  Again, do this quickly and it seems instantaneous and in some cases rather magical.

The Bad:

True flexibility.  A computer’s amazing abilities also point out its limitations.  A computer by itself can’t do anything.  It requires a programmer to think through what needs to be done, along with all the variations that can and should be thought of, and then program the capabilities into the system.  If the developer didn’t think of it, it can’t be done on that system.  Have you ever tried to write a paper in Excel? It may be a great idea, but the developers didn’t think so, so they didn’t build that capability into Excel.

The Ugly:

Thinking.  And anything related to real thought. This falls out from the bad, and when people ask a computer to think, things rapidly become ugly.  Creativity, handling a new situation, and judgement calls are all in this category.  If a computer hasn’t been programmed to handle a situation or create something, it can’t do it.  Trying to program a computer to handle all situations, even ones that haven’t been seen yet, is a fool’s errand.  Worse, handling unique situations with a standard response can lead to bad outcomes.  How many times have you heard in essence, “I’m sorry, but your request, while reasonable, can’t be done because the computer won’t let me?”  Talk about great customer service!  Even worse is that the results coming from a computer are often accepted as immutable, which limits what an organization can see and do.

The Great:

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Knowing this, what makes a great computer system?  It’s rather simple, really.  Ask the computer to do what it does best: process and display data. Let humans do what they do best: handle unique cases and make judgement calls.

The Example:

Accounts Receivable is a prime example of how a computer system can be great, if done correctly.  A/R at its heart is simple.  Receive payments and apply payments.  The system will need to have some business rules, or cases.  A payment is received that exactly matches the current month’s invoice.  That may cover 50% of the payments.  A good start.  How about a payment is received that exactly matches all of the customer’s open invoices?  Now we’re up to 70%.  Continue on, and with 6-10 simple rules it’s possible to get above 90% of incoming payments.  To get close to 100%, 100-500 rules may need to be defined, developed, tested, and maintained.  And a lot of them will be wrong, leading to upset customers and lots of re-work.

A better way to handle this would be to identify a target success rate and develop rules to get there.  95%?  Doable, almost certainly.  How do you handle the oddball payments?  Simple.  Develop a payment screen that presents payment and account information and let a human make the call.  Does a payment come in for a customer in Seattle, their vacation home in Florida and their cousin in Baltimore?  Make it easy for the user to find the information and apply the payment across all three accounts.

The Conclusion:

Look for, and require, computer systems that understand the difference between doing, simple decision-making and thinking.  The best systems are the ones that let the computer take care of the normal stuff and enables flexibility, creativity and judgement.

If you have any questions about this article or computer systems, or would like to talk about how to enable growth and energize your thinking, contact me at  617-855-5439 or jmarcos@complexityclarified.com.