An analogy of the pitfalls of a DIY loan management platform.

It's all about the choices we make…

Our next-door-but-one neighbour Wayne chose to install his own kitchen using, as much as possible, second-hand purchases from online auctions and hence save lots of money. Having spent evenings and weekends for weeks finding a set of kitchen units that would cover his needs, he then had to hire a van to pick them up, which was not cheap. Flat-pack items are not usually designed to be re-flat-packed and Wayne's units were no exception, so had to be transported and stored in their final, bulky, form. Wayne, having spent all his spare time looking for the near-ideal units, had not had time to prepare their out-dated kitchen to receive the new units, so they had to be stored in the lounge. His young children enjoyed the novelty of watching TV on a sofa that was balanced on top of several kitchen units, but similarly balancing upon armchairs, five feet off the floor, was not something that Wayne or his wife were prepared to risk, so they spent almost six weeks scrunched on the floor or standing up when 'relaxing' with their favourite soaps in the evening. The dishwasher, cooker, extractor unit and also the 5-ring hob, which his wife had been particularly pleased with, were stacked in the already small hallway, until a neighbour took pity and let them squeeze them in his garden shed.

Having cleared the kitchen of all the old units, gas cooker and a small partition wall, Wayne found that the floor was very uneven, so began searching online for cheap levelling compound. Eight days later he went to collect twelve almost-new bags of this special type of cement, some of which were slightly split, and one of which ruptured enough to spread a thin layer of cement powder over the whole of the inside of the family car. Unfortunately, it was raining that evening and a few-dozen unnoticed drops of rain found their way on to the dusting of cement powder.

The levelling compound was not difficult to mix and apply, but being necessarily runny, finds any small holes left in the subfloor. This proved to be the case with Wayne, and by the time he'd found and stopped up the offending holes, the twelve bags proved to be insufficient to level the whole floor. Wayne, determined not to waste more time and money on more compound, decided to increase the volume by bulking out the deepest areas of levelled kitchen floor with a couple of 25kg bags of pea-gravel that he had left over from gravelling the front garden. Unfortunately, small though the gravel was, it still protruded from the otherwise level floor and had to be shaved down with a large angle-grinder, hired specifically for the task. Overlooked gravel bumps combined with two differing floor tile thicknesses, meant Wayne had to then use a particularly hefty layer of tile adhesive, which took abnormally long both to apply and to dry.

Finally the floor units could be moved from the lounge and fixed in place in the new kitchen. Wayne could turn his attention to the electrics, and spent a long weekend running cooker, hob, under-cupboard light, dish-washer and socket cables from next to the fuse box in the hall, under the landing and main-bedroom floor and down grooves in the kitchen wall that he had to cut by hand with a masonry chisel. His wife, thoroughly cheesed off with the whole project, particularly disliked the faded but still serviceable carpets in their bedroom and on the landing, which presenting a trip-hazard now they were not properly secured at the edges and badly rucked. Assured by Wayne that the upstairs disruption was over, she rapidly chose, ordered, and had professionally installed new, quality carpet throughout the first floor.

Fully aware that the cabling needed certification by a qualified electrician, Wayne had arranged for a friend who had been an electrician for years but was too busy to do all the work, to make the necessary changes in the hall fuse-box, check the second-hand appliances that came with the second-hand kitchen and to certify the whole installation. When he had time, his friend examined the cabling and congratulated Wayne on the sound job he'd done - all the correct cables were run correctly and he explained how to create recesses in the walls to the correct depth for the socket boxes and isolation boxes, so they wouldn't protrude. The neighbour being away, though, he couldn't check the electrical units. Wayne proceeded with chasing oblongs in the wall and installing the electrical terminals for the cooker, dishwasher etc. as he'd been shown, then got on with mounting the kitchen wall units and that finally cleared the lounge completely.

With a feeling of optimism at a job nearly finished, Wayne and family went out and chose a new sink and new worktops, which he was determined to cut to shape himself. After cutting the joins for the two corners in the u-shaped kitchen, he decided to save himself the time and expense of using a biscuit jointer. For those not familiar with this piece of kit it allows one to cut precise slots in two workpieces and glue them together using a wooden 'biscuit' that fits in to both slots and keeps the joint exactly aligned while the glues dries. Next came cutting the worktop holes for the extra-wide hob and the sink. That also went ahead over another weekend without major accident or injury. When putting the corner join in, though Wayne couldn't see how it was possible to secure the sink within the hole after the worktop had been installed, so installed it beforehand, joined the two worktops together with them suspended by offcuts over their final position while he secured the pieces of worktop together, which was very awkward and slow because he didn't have the right spanner. The exact joining of the two pieces was also done while suspended, because he hadn't used the biscuit-jointer and needed a gap under the worktop so he could clamp the pieces in place to get them exactly aligned. After drying and lowering, the two pieces were found to be almost exactly aligned – only about 1mm out at the front and 2mm out at the back.

Wayne had managed to get some cut-price end-of-line tiles that were just enough to do the job, if he didn't break more than a few. With that in mind he set about tiling the walls, very carefully cutting tiles where necessary. He invested in a cheap, electric tile cutter to speed up the task, but the cutting disk wobbled causing somewhat wonky cuts and several breakages. After several late nights and another weekend, he managed to complete the tiling, forced into using three or four broken tiles because he had run out of spares. Their newly-finished kitchen was immediately pressed in to service to cook dinner for some friends, including the electrician. During final preparation, when all the hob rings were in use, the hob suddenly stopped working. The electrician found that the circuit had tripped at the fuse board. While all the electrical units proved to be electrically sound, the rating of the large hob was too high for the thickness of cable that Wayne had installed for it and also the trip mechanism in the fuse box.

We are surrounded by choice.

You don't need me to tell you the moral of this story. Here at Madiston, we have a combined 150 years of experience in designing, developing, implementing and supporting financial sector technology around the world. We are very picky about our choice of biscuit jointers, hob cables and transport mechanisms, and we also know a thing or two about certification.

You may choose to custom build your lending software or you can choose Madiston's hyper-automated, configurable lending platform that has many of the benefits of custom-build but without the risks!

Your choice.