We spend a lot of time talking to business managers about how their operations run. The perspective that we commonly face is one of "this is how we do it; we are looking for software to do it better." But from a business perspective, that is the wrong approach.

First, the pain of software adoption is significant, and relatively insensitive to scope of change involved. Whether your software project is small or extensive, employees are going to be unhappy about it for anywhere between a couple of weeks and several months. But with all change, people eventually adjust and move on, and pretty soon what was so traumatic becomes the new standard.

Second, the opportunity to get creative and completely re-engineer how your business works is priceless and rare. Software projects are exactly that opportunity. The business value to be gained from rebuilding your processes from the ground up can be significant. What's more, re-engineering is the type of endeavor that happens in iterations; and therefore the sooner you start to think outside the box, the sooner you can get to the more advanced iterations that bring real business value.

Here's an example: We have a customer that relies on dispatching agents into the field at scheduled times, who then report back important information. Those agents need to set up profile information about themselves so they can receive work. The work involves being at key locations in a timely fashion and performing activities. In the first iteration, the business owner thought to give them Web pages to upload their profile information, and e-mails to notify them of scheduled activities. The rest of the process of verifying the profile information, standing on top of them to get their documents submitted, and making sure they attended their events and performed their activities in a timely fashion was all manual.

In the second iteration, the business owner realized the computer could automatically detect missing profile information and stay on top of the employee to provide it. They further realized they could rely on text messaging to automatically validate the employee's performance of activities at the scheduled times, relying on manual processes just to deal with exceptions.

The resulting productivity gain for this business was enormous. It never could have happened without the desire to think creatively about how to re-engineer the business process from the ground up.

Take advantage of software projects to realize significant business value, think outside the box and don't listen to anyone who is telling you something has to be a certain way because "that's how it's always been done."

Treff LaPlante is president and chief executive officer of Carlisle-based WorkXpress.