Monday Question: Configured, or Just Bought?
Before deciding a piece of software isn't working, ask this about it:
Did anyone actually configure it, or is it still doing whatever it did on day one?
A surprising amount of operations software gets bought, connected, and then left running on its out-of-the-box defaults indefinitely. Nobody set up the rules that matter to this specific business. Nobody customized the fields, the workflows, the alerts. The tool isn't failing. It's doing exactly what an unconfigured tool does, which is provide the most generic possible version of its job.
This matters because it changes what you should do next. Software that's genuinely wrong for the job needs replacing. Software that's never been configured needs configuring, which is a smaller, cheaper, faster fix that gets skipped constantly because it's less satisfying than buying something new.
Check the tool you're least happy with right now. Ask whether its actual settings reflect how your business works, or whether they're still the defaults from installation day. It's the same buy-versus-configure question behind the three questions worth asking before any AI purchase, and the same stay-extend-build test Copilot itself forces on every Microsoft 365 team.
Sorting a real disappointment into "wrong tool" versus "unconfigured tool" is usually a short conversation. Get in touch if you're staring at one.
Rosemarie Withee has spent thirteen years helping operations teams get real work out of their software, first Microsoft 365, now AI. She’s written six books for Wiley and builds AI products at Portal Integrators.