News & Views

May 5, 2010 on Toolbox for IT but first published November 2006 from Aberdeen Group – “The trade-off between Best of Breed functionality and ease of integration is no longer as simple as it once was. Over the generations, Enterprise Resource Planning has continued to expand, blurring the boundaries of core ERP functionality. The number of modules and the extent of functionality offered in the ERP suite have steadily grown over the past two decades. At the same time, the consolidation within the software industry is having a broader effect than just on ERP itself. ERP companies have also been gobbling up pure play or Best of Breed vendors that offer extensions to core ERP functionality. This is having a profound effect on the enterprise application vendor landscape and also on how ERP versus “Best of Breed” decisions are fundamentally made. More and more companies are exploring the limits of these boundaries and weighing decisions that balance integration efforts and the ability to upgrade to new releases against extended features, functions and advanced technology. …”

180 View – I recently used this article in a course taught at Ryerson University. The subject matter also continues to come up in client engagements. Decision makers still want to know whether to go best of breed or ERP. They also want to know what makes programs really integrated. In a chart in the article entitled Levels of Integration, Aberdeen does provide some guidance. For example, the tightest level of integration would be a module of ERP defined as “Single data base; no redundancy of data elements; built with the same development tools and infrastructure as core ERP.” Other categories are “Tightly integrated extension”, “Extension is loosely integrated or not integrated but sold and supported by a single vendor”, “Extension is loosely integrated or not integrated, sold and supported by multiple vendors”, “Extension is sold and supported independently by multiple vendors” Although the definitions are useful, they are not sufficient. You also need to consider the type of integration such as real-time or batch or whether it’s one-way or two-way. It’s a lot easier to import a transaction than to synchronize a master file such as inventory. Another dimension to integration is the tools/technology used. For example, it would be preferable to integrate using industry standard tools rather than proprietary tools that are not well supported. Finally, when integration does occur, you should be concerned about data integrity in terms of whether the integration complies with business and data validation rules.