Vendor packages may offer the allure of off-the-shelf solutions
that take almost no work and instantly provide the business with the
answers to all their questions. Packaged solutions appease fears and
satisfy the desire for instant solutions – and the demo looks great!
However, be sure to read the fine print, such as the qualifiers that
everything works fine only if all your data is clean, all the data is
included in the supported sources and your business analytics match the
prebuilt models.

If we’ve learned anything from recent
history, however, it’s that these packages are not simply buy-and-use
projects. A great deal of customization is required to implement and
deploy these packaged solutions. For these packages to really be
effective, you need to perform data integration. These solutions are
great as a front-end application for your data integration effort; use
them to sell the business on the need for data integration. Don’t let
people oversell the packages – they’re awesome, but only when you have
the data.