Every old househas a ghost story.

So does the ERPthat runs your business today.

OBJECTMONTHEND_FIX
TYPEcustom program
AUTHORUX0412
CREATED2014-03-11
NOTEtemporary fix.remove after go-live.

Exhibit 1. Illustrative.The kind of thing that still runs at month-end.

Someone made this decision.

They had a reason.

The reason left with them.

Most organisationsalready own the informationthey are searching for.

They just don't knowwhere it lives.

Every ERPhas a gatekeeper.

One person who knowswhat is going on under the hood.

Everyone else stays out.Nobody wants to be the one who broke it.

So nobody asks.And where would you even start looking?

“If we don't talk about it,it won't break.”

We thought this was one company's habit.It wasn't.

Things we keep noticing

Twenty-two years inside these systems.

Roughly a third of the custom codein a mature systemcan't be explainedby the people who run it.

In our experience.Not a measurement.

A server room.

The most important person in the buildinghad not worked there for six years.

A renewals review.

Halfway through,we noticed we had stopped talkingabout the system that runs the business.We were talking about the toolswe had bought to explain it.Every one of them renews.

We don't startwith workshops.

Enough discussioncan explain almost anything.Evidence is harder to argue with.

Field Note · Mike Hartman

The door frame.

When you buy an old house,there is usually a door frame somewherewith pencil marks on it.

Names. Dates.A line for every year a child grew.

People you will never meet,who lived there long before you did,and who left their markwhere nobody thinks to look.

The system that has run the business for twenty yearshas that door frame too.It is just not in the kitchen.

Open the custom codeand look at who wrote it.Then look at the current staff list.The names do not match.

The organisation had forgotten these people.The system had not.Every object carries its author.Every change carries a date.

The ghosts signed their work.Nobody reads the signatures.

Read the whole note

So we builtsomething that does.

It reads what the system recorded about itself,and writes down what it finds.It cannot change anything,so looking breaks nothing.Some of it is odd. Some of it is fine.It says both.

Index of what it looks forYour system

Code that runs every night,whose author no longer has a login. not yet asked

Still running Read from job history, the object catalogue and the user list.

It survives every upgrade.Few people know why it was built.If it breaks, rebuilding it is a project of its own,and it starts with reverse-engineering what the business needed.

Live custom codewhose author no longer has a login. not yet asked

No custodian Read from the object catalogue, against the user list.

Nobody on the system can say why it was built.Every change to it starts with forensic reading.Sometimes the largest author of all is one of them.

Custom code with every signof having been abandoned. not yet asked

Phantom code Four signals: age, change, author, package.

Old. No recent change.Its author gone. Its package standing alone.And still carried into every upgrade.Whether it still runs is a different question.The report says which one it answered.

The same person can enter an invoiceand run the payment. not yet asked

Lead

Privileged accounts nobody has used in ninety days,still holding their grants. not yet asked

Finding

Role assignments that passed their end dateand were never taken off the books. not yet asked

Finding

Whether change loggingwas ever switched off in production. not yet asked

Finding

The gap that quietly removesthe evidence behind every other question.

Background jobs that run cleanly.It reports that too. not yet asked

Healthy

Who approved each grant.It isn't in the export,so the report says so instead of guessing. says so

Honesty

Every one of these has a name, a rule and a source.We can't tell you your numbers.Nobody can,until the system is asked.

Situations we keep encountering

Not industries. Moments.Banks, mines, factories and municipalities meet the same ones.

The audit meeting Nobody in the room disputed the number.They disputed where it came from. That's us → The retirement letter The replacement inherited the system.Nobody inherited the knowledge. That's us → The cloud business case The migration cost was known.What would be migrated wasn't. That's us → The batch that never finished By 08:00 people were debating the outcome.Nobody was debating whether the data was complete. That's us → The renewals review Every contract had an owner.Nobody could explain the original reason for half of them. That's us →

What we actually do.

We measure the ERPthat runs the business today.

We identify what exists.

We identify what is used.

We identify what nobody can explain.

Then we put evidence in front of the peoplewho need to make decisions.That's it.

Things BridgeCorewill not tell you.

Why something was built.

The system records who and when.The why left with them.

What the system never kept.

Deleted objects leave no trace.The interface register keeps no change dates.Where that matters,the report says Not Measured, and why.

What you should do about it.

We report.The decision stays yours.

A saving we made up.

No rand figure appearsthat your own evidence cannot carry.

Anything a model guessed.

No machine learning and no language modelsits behind any number we return.

That a blank means safe.

Where the evidence was missing,the result says Not Measured, and why.

Five numbers nobodyin your building knows.

Not the CFO.Not the CIO.Not even the gatekeeper.Take a guess anyway.

1.

How many people wrotethe custom code your business runs on?
people
2.

How many of themstill have a login?
people
3.

How much of that code showsevery sign of having been abandoned?
%
4.

How many people can enter an invoiceand also run the payment?
people
5.

How many administrator accountshas nobody used in ninety days?
accounts

Nobody will see your answers.Not even us.

Your ERPalready knows.

Every one of these answersis in the system's own records,waiting to be asked.

Ask your ERP Your guesses stay on this page.Nothing is sent or stored. Not ready to ask yet? Follow BridgeCore on LinkedIn →