So who has this 'small number of very sophisticated users'? I never did. After I retired the first time, I was asked to come back, and ended up working another three years. During that time, I fixed many faults and improved lots of code that was never implemented by managers who were satisfied with 'good enough', to the detriment of data quality and user satisfaction. If users have to circumvent your system to do their job, you have failed. If your support people are constantly handling quality issues and failures, you have failed again.