Is our software failing us or are we failing our software?

In a recent Linked In article, Geni Whitehouse asked "Why is our Software Failing Us?"  Specifically, she argues that we've succeeded only at building "big fat buckets of data" that we are now failing to analyze and that we've lost the promise of automation in our systems.

As I read through the article I didn't find anything that was truly a software issue, at least as it relates to any modern ERP system.  What I thought back to was a recent quote from economist Steven Leavitt in a PowerPivotPro article where he said, "People who like to analyze data are the scarcest resource in the business world today."

I'm not sure that our software is failing us. I think that we're failing our companies by not learning to use our software.

Whitehouse starts her article with the assertion that we've built silos of data in ERP, CRM, POS and other systems. She's right. It would be great if all software solutions talked to each other. But this aspiration is about as unrealistic as getting all people to talk to each other. I've been involved in enough integration project to know that while each one involves trade-offs, the really good ones work because the team thinks about the data, and the reporting on that data, throughout the entire process.

It also really helps if you have a corporate strategy around software. When I was at Transit TV we had a policy that preferred software with a SQL Server back end. We had SQL expertise throughout the company so it made sense for our particular group. I ...