Take a few minutes to check out Dan Farber's interview of Tasty Baking's CIO Brendan O'Malley. Tasty bakes and distributes millions of cakes, cookies and pies every day on the East Coast. They are moving from their 90 year old plant to a new facility in the near future, and O'Malley has to manage the IT challenge. Wow, what a challenge.

In this 2 minute outtake, O'Malley discusses the multiple, disparate systems which first must be discovered, and then assessed for value, before the move to the new facility. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) should take note: This is what happens to the typical company as it grows and grows up. If you have the time, listen to the whole interview. Later, O'Malley discusses putting the company's IT requirements into one basket, meaning integrated systems, and how this reduces cost and risk.

As soon as I read the blurb about this interview I knew it would be a great way to make the point, again, about how fast systems can multiply at a business, and how difficult they are to manage. If you are running a small growing enterprise make sure that you purchase systems that help you to achieve competitive advantage while not ultimately draining away resources. Systems, and their advocates, often advance the benefits, while, since another department bears them, costs are forgotten. Systems must benefit the entire organization as much as possible: This is the only way to honestly gauge costs and benefits. The result will always be fewer systems of greater value.

By the way, he IBM commercial at the beginning is also hilarious and worthwhile to think about. Execution really is everything, regardless of the system or the idea.