I have had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to take a look at what SAP calls its “MySAP All-in-One” solution. All-in-One is essentially the MySAP software combined with the skills, expertise and intellectual property of the business partner/software vendor (disclaimer: my firm, BDO Kendalls, sells, supports and implements the MySAP software, although I don’t personally benefit from the thing).
A few years ago I would have told my clients to run screaming in the other direction (or at least think very, very carefully before proceeding with any ERP, including SAP – particularly after the experience of the Queensland government with SAP). In fact, I once had a good hearty laugh when SAP tendered for a software solution I was advising on – the client’s budget didn’t cover Stage 1.
However, it would seem that the lesson has been learnt, and MySAP’s focus is on delivering business solutions in the context of the customisation required. Time was, a salesperson would glibly state, “yes, that’s possible, just do the customisation” – and somehow completely omitting the phrase “but I don’t know that that’s a particularly smart thing to do because it’s really expensive and adds bugs and makes upgrades difficult and…”.
Of course the difficulties were not always, I think, due to “good” salespeople. Some of my best friends are salespeople. Businesses at one time felt that it was worth the effort to change software to meet their business processes – but neglected to adjust the projected cost by the requisite risk factor.
At any rate, if you are an SME thinking about the possible benefits an ERP can bring, you could do far worse than check out MySAP All-in-One. It’s a rapidly shrinking market since Peoplesoft bought JD Edwards and Oracle bought Peoplesoft – but that’s the way of the world.