News & Views

August 23, 2010 from The Enterprise System Spectator – “…SAP and Oracle are two well-know, so-called “Tier I” ERP systems. It is generally understood that these systems can support the largest, most complex, most geographically-dispersed organizations. They can support the widest number of industry sectors. They do this by incorporating a great deal of functionality for various industries, business processes, and local regulatory requirements. They are highly configurable. In other words, they are big pieces of software, or as I like to put it, they have a “big footprint.”

This complexity comes with a price. It means that to make use of the system in a specific organization, many decisions have to be made during the implementation. These decisions cost time and money to configure the software and test it specifically for the organization’s needs. This drives up the cost of the implementation.

SAP and Oracle are well-aware of this issue and have worked hard over the past decade to pre-configure their systems for specific industries and use cases. If a customer fits well into the vendor’s pre-configured templates (“accelerators” in Oracle-speak, or “best practices” as SAP calls them), much of the complexity of the software can be hidden from view. Customers that fall neatly into the vendor’s template can sometimes achieve very rapid and cost-effective implementations. Both vendors will gladly share references of such with prospects…”

180 View – I have used SAP to teach University students about ERP and it is a struggle for them (and me). But I can imagine that it would be a lot easier if the system was pre-configured for us, and I only had to work with a small number of programs within SAP. Although I have heard from the vendors about their pre-configured systems and fast/inexpensive implementations, I have not yet spoken to an actual client about it. SAP and Oracle still have a long way to go to get their message across.