"Catch the ball before you run" is a common phrase in North American football. The point is, if you do not have a firm grasp on the ball as you attempt to navigate through a field of competitors, the ball will likely end up in the grasp of someone else who is intent on taking it in the opposite direction.

From the perspective of fluidity, in order to start to gain control over your unique, specialized processes, you will want to have taken care of the basics. This includes how you acquire what you need, sell what you offer, and manage what you have. In the current environment, these kinds of activities are referred to as enterprise requirements planning (ERP) functions. This is a pretty cluncky to be sure. It grew out of a slightly better phrase, manufacturing requirements planning.

These days there are many options for such capabilities. There are commercial alternatives. There are also open source options. We recommend the latter. In fact, if you are interested, we can provide such capabilities. In the least, you will want to use technologies that allow you to interface with underlying functions or database repositories. Without such connections, you really won't be able to take advantage of the promise of fluidity.