Jul
31
Personal Resource Planning
Filed Under Uncategorized
My current job is to implement an ERP system for a small manufacturing company. It’s about as exciting as it sounds. But there are moments of enlightenment. The other day, amidst meetings and arguments about which epoxy types will default on a lab screen, I had an epiphany.
I’m all about data. I keep lists of things to do, things I’ve done. I record when I work out, what I read, what movies I watch. I love Quicken. I’ve written about some other people who take this type of life tracking to an extreme, mostly as a reminder to myself that I am not alone. There is a certain type of person who keeps track of things–not because they necessarily like to, but just because it is what they do.
ERP systems just track data. You can use all the executive management ROI-cost-savings-at-the-end-of-the-day-net-net bullshit you want to justify these systems, but all they do is connect data. So I thought, why should the boring business of work have all the fun? Why don’t we have Personal Resource Planning software? Call it PRP.
Our lives a full off seemingly unrelated data points. We have to keep track of money and hobbies and sick kids and vacations we’ll never take and movies we’ll forget to see. But these things are all related. The commonality is you.
Consider money. People like myself can use Quicken to track cash flow. We see purchases, salaries, savings, and such. If one is so inclined, one can pull reports based on categories to see how you piss away your money in nicely formatted pie charts. If one is even more inclined, one can pull out tax deductible expenses, setting oneself up for a proper IRS audit.
I’m willing to bet that most people who use Quicken do so only as an electronic check book. And why not. Sure, you can capture automobile expenses, but what does this do other than create a colorful chart?
But what if you could tie those mechanic’s payments to a maintenance history of my car? A personal ERP system could add a whole new dimension to our data. I could see exactly how much my commute was costing each day. Thinking about buying a more fuel-efficient car? You could immediately see if the purchase would pay off.
Another example. Say you just bought a thirty year old house and have identified several projects you’d like to complete over the next five years. You could use such a tool to track these projects in close synchronization with your personal finances. You can see how much that new refrigerator cuts off your electric bill. Further, you can track the serial number and warranty expiration for said refrigerator in the same system. Total cost of ownership, payback periods, insurance data: it’s all there.
More: track birthdays to gifts given to your family tree.
Granted, such a system would be reserved for true data hounds or those on the slightly obsessive side of the spectrum. Think how easily you could pull out a Feltron Annual Report (sans design, of course). But this could be a financially viable product if you could appeal to more casual users. Start with financial management and build into popular modules like projects, home inventory, genealogy. Host it remotely and give a slick web interface.
There you go, a free idea. I’m hesitant to post this because I feel I should quit my job and immediately begin work on this.
The thing is, I’m only kind of kidding.
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