Competitive pressures dictate that organizations must find ways to reduce the time it takes to complete processes and access information. As a result, organizations are constantly building custom workgroup solutions. Organization-wide workgroup solutions are typically built by professional software developers who are part of the IS department. At the departmental level, solutions are often developed by technical "power users" who have learned how to write programs.
Both of these development resources are expensive, and so are the solutions they provide. Because custom solutions are in high demand, IS departments are overwhelmed with requests for new software systems and enhancements to existing solutions. As a result, solutions usually take a long time to be delivered and are difficult to modify when business conditions change, as they inevitably do.