When my interest in matching and reconciliation solutions began around 10 years ago, solutions were little more than a box in the corner producing daily exception lists for manual review and archival. Investment and technology have had an incredible effect on such solutions that now include complex ETL integration, pre and post import validation and manipulation, duplicate checking, intra-day processing, aggregate matching, permutation matching, candidate matching, multi-threading, workflow, real-time reporting, 64 bit processing, complex derivative and high volume processing.  It’s exciting. And it represents enormous cost and risk reduction for organisations effectively deploying such capabilities. But spare a thought for our IT and system support teams that configure, customise, track, analyse and optimise these environment.

Many of us recall, or are living through, experiences of projects that have spiralled in cost as customisation and consultancy levels associated with the delivery of highly complex and comprehensive solution rise astronomically, and theoretically sound plans fail to become practical reality. It is not that such visions are too lofty, more that in our software solution selection and process designs we have to ensure that each element is not just achievable, but also practical. A pragmatic approach means considering long term support, maintenance, enhancement and optimisation, as well as providing a framework that is deployable with a quick time to market. Pushing such complexities offshore or into managed services often seems like a sensible approach but in reality can be merely hiding the problems, or simply passing responsibility elsewhere.

In an age where literally anything is possible, and as we look to manage true end to end automation, outsource entire processes, deliver real-time global statistics to remote hand held devices and employ and leverage new technologies, a cautionary bell chimes to remind us that concepts and theoretical solutions need to become a reality before gains can be realised. Contrary to many requirements, simplicity becomes the watchword as this ensures initial and ongoing success of our projects.

Perhaps, as we strive for continual risk reduction and operational efficiency improvement, we should also be raising the profile of, and ensuring our environments deliver and continue to encourage, operational simplicity. The benefits of which are immediately tangible through higher project success rates, and continual process optimisation delivering higher long term cost and risk elimination.