An Information System should at the very least avoid duplicate work and keep processes as simple as possible.
A thumb rule to gauge the level of simplicity in any organisation is to consider the time and effort involved in training a new recruit!
The faster a new hire can be trained the higher are your chances in being effective and thus competitive.
We have a couple of hundred customers. Some of them work on about 5 - 10 projects at any given moment i.e. the projects which have a bearing on our production.
When the customers call us, they tend to use their project number as a reference code. This is very natural as they use the same code internally in their company and is easily recalled from memory.
We need to cross check each project and tally them with their purchase order numbers. Then tally the Purchase Order(PO) number with our Order Acceptance number(OA).
Once upon a time, this OA would have to be tallied with our Process Chart(PC) number.
PN - Used by Customer
PO - Used by Customer
OA - Used by Administration (our side)
PC - Used by Work Center (our side)
The arrows indicate “flow of thought” as in, using PN we know PO, using PO we know OA and so on..
#1 
Later we changed the equation;
#2 
[OA and PC numbers were made the same]
Now we could directly substitute PC for OA.
#3 
I recently asked a customer to quote his PO so that we could easily pick up his order and provide him the requested information (status) quickly.
Now #3 has changed to,
This way the only loop the customer has to jump through is provide his PO.
It is extremely easy to teach someone to use the autofilter OR use “cntrl + F” in a spreadsheet. It might take us a few seconds.
Now try teaching the older system to a new comer!!
On the other hand the older system is cumbersome and confusing, especially to a person who is new in the organisation.
In an age when every person who comes in has to hit the ground running, this simplicity could give the company the ability to stay ahead of the curve!!
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