In the digital world, any intelligent software must also have heart, body, and soul in it to function consistently. Anything that has body only is nothing but a useless body of information. Anything that has heart only is also a useless software application with nothing to process. The soul works the heart and body to produce its magic.

The Body, the Rocks

Bodies of information are like Rocks and other obvious things in the physical world that are visible, picked, and processed further to build our “brick and mortar” businesses. A system similar to our human body parts that sends information internally, processed, and stored in our brain - the hard disk device of our body. In the business world, bodies of information, also known as data, are routinely processed further daily. Historically, data processing started from manual recording, then to worksheets, then to specific-purpose computer programs/database, or the combination thereof. Today, we have moved a notch higher, the acceptable minimum is to have at least a “fully integrated end to end application/database information processing system”, that’s an ERP software for short where only one (1) integrated database pool storage exists for all bodies of information.

The Heart, the Precious Metals

In our physical world, the Precious Metals represents the physical heart because it lies beneath and underground, not visible. Unlike the rock that you can easily pickup, precious metals need to be mined deep and specialized tools/processes are needed to transform it further to a “useful state” material. These precious minerals in its useful form are also the electronic raw materials of the internals of the physical digital machine – the Computer. These materials makes the functioning heart of the computer. Inside this digital machine, many software applications run to do their specific work to process data and produce all kind of desired functional results. Just like our human organs, they all have different functions and purposes. But there is always only one digital heart that does the most vital central core function of all.

The Digital Heart, the T

How should a Digital Heart look like? We all know what our human heart looks like. It has the left and right ventricles, among other parts, where all our blood flows through efficiently. But do we have an idea of how a digital heart should look like? Or how it should be presented through an analogy? From my decades of IT experiences, I will now say that the digital heart of digital systems is the “Digital Transaction Card” or “Digital Ledger” software application/database portion of any properly designed digital system application. Just like the human heart, it has a left and a right side, and other parts, where information, like blood, flows through. It knows exactly how to process the information, to write it on the left or right side (as in/out or debit/credit), and the other related detailed information it saves that makes it even more powerful. In Accounting terminology, we can also call this the T account - notice the shape similarity of the human heart and the T account. Also in Inventory Management, we use the T cards to record to. No wonder the new Bitcoin Crypto Currency technology concept became viable now because of the same basic T ledger approach.  Although replicated, decentralized in structure, and with unbreakable chain key, the method of storing in T accounts is still the core to bitcoin’s viability. The heart or digital core of any enterprise system is therefore its Internal Ledger Processing/Storage system.

The point I am trying drive at today is this, if your current business system still does not have the Digital Heart and One Data Pool Body, you still are not properly digitally transformed. You remain not optimized and still vulnerable to all kinds of risks, cost overruns, and inefficiencies. And frankly, it will be very difficult and close to impossible for you to incorporate into your business system the newest technologies like Cloud Computing, Business Intelligence (BI), Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI), and etc.  

The Soul, the Human

The Soul is God-given and only humans have it. The soul makes the heart beat and moves the body. For the digital transformation to start, the soul makes the decision, so let me ask you - When will you have the soul to decide to migrate your business system to one that has the digital heart? It’s no longer will, it is when? The sooner, the better. I’ll be praying for you.

The Soul of the Filipino Programmer

Please allow me to share with you one important soul-searching thing that is very close to my heart that we Filipinos should consider. The Local Software Development Industry, needs your Support and Patronage to grow. This is a different group, NOT the same as the foreign-serving, employment-only oriented software outsourcing industry in our IT Parks. We Filipino Consumers have the habit of preferring to use foreign branded software products and we usually “small” the Filipino (look down on Filipino made) for many reasons which I consider mostly biased and inconsiderate. It’s really high time that we give them the benefit of the doubt and the break please.  Our humblest request is that when it comes to your need for an enterprise class software product like ERP, among others, don’t just limit your option to foreign brand, give the local Filipino Programmer the chance to provide these because in this time and age, they are equally capable of making Quality Software already. Over the last 3 decades, this is an industry that the Filipino Intellect has excelled upon. It is a fact that our best Filipino programmers, for lack of local opportunity, have left our country and are now all over the globe living decent lives out there. What about the many new upcoming good Local Programmers that have to stay for one reason or another. Should they also leave our country just to be able to afford. Here in our country, they don’t have any silicon-valley like support systems, zero government support, and no pool of investors to help them. They have struggled to survive and have built and delivered reliable enterprise-class software products to local SME’s that are equally powerful and stable as leading foreign counterpart brands, delivering consistent quality results to already many happy SME customers.  After all, software in essence is just quality purposeful English-like, poetic lines of codes that the Filipino heart, body, and soul has already learned to master. Filipino businesses must help them to stay and continue their local career so their children and grandchildren will follow their footsteps and finally see a true thriving and growing local Software Development Industry soon. In this new decade, let’s be China-like here, Filipino-built Software and Filipino-consumed, into the future. Quality Filipino made software is already here.

Today is the day of the Heart, Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!

MAJ

2021-02-14