A Limited Point of View on Enterprise Applications package selection.

A limited Point of View about how to make decisions on the core enterprise applications to support your business. There's consistent clamor about where to start how to start the selection of products that will provide transformative solutions to your business problems. This mostly about ERP, but it applies to CRM, SCM, HCM, ECM and more.

Let's first define what it looks like in most businesses today and there are businesses of all types there are businesses that make things through our businesses that distribute things there are businesses that make and service things and there are businesses that are purely a service.

Referencing the above I typically start My conversations with clients who asked me for advice with the following commentary : “Let's list the core things that your company does. Do you Make something, or do just Sell things you buy from others, or do you provide a Service of some sort?”

If you make something you typically have to buy things to manufacture what it is, you make. So now that we know you Make things it means you must do a number of other things. As said in addition to Making things, you must Buy things then you must Sell things and you must Count things, so the list is simple Buy, Make, Sell, Count.

It's really as simple as that and ERP solutions have been providing core integrated applications to do this for over 30 years.

Let's talk a little bit about your business maturity model a lot of that has to do with how long you've been around and what your market is for what you make or sell. So, if you're just entering a market with a new idea, product then you have to be really careful that you don't overdo it. What I mean is procure and implement a solution that will quickly bring order and process to these core processes of Buy Make Sell and Count. Each of these have sublevel processes and we could delve into that but let's move through the maturity model.

Outside of a business entering the market there are those who were in the market for some period of time let's use five years as an example who are gazelles meaning they're running fast and growing at a rapid rate and introducing new products into new markets. This new maturity level requires that perhaps the enterprise application you bought During your market entry may not have the functionality to support this new growth. Now let me say that that was likely a problem ten to fifteen years ago. Honestly most of the ERP solutions scale particularly well today but many of them still have actually have early-stage solutions.

Before talking about the solutions themselves we should continue down the maturity curve. So, there's all been a lot of input on what defines a small business a medium sized business or a large enterprise or even to so called Very Large Enterprise. The characterization focuses on revenue size. While this is a convenient measure it not a very good one.

When it comes to picking solutions, this is only one measure to determine your size or maturity. The measure I use for both size is the complexity factor.

There are lots of definitions to complexity in particular in manufacturing, it could be multiple modes of manufacturing (Make to Order, Make to Stock, Engineered to Order or being both a process manufacturing and discrete manufacturing).

Are you a compliance-based organization?  (Statutory and Regulatory Compliance drives huge complexities across many industries) https://www.lisam.com/news/10-most-regulated-industries-in-the-us/ and there is even more compliance in the EU.

It’s also about org structure; amount of physical locations, multiple currencies, muti national complexities (language, accounting, currency, regulation, privacy )third party dependencies, third party dependencies, (Co-manufacturing, 3PL) Sales organization, Channels to Market, Joint Venture relationships. etc.

The list of complexities can get enormous when you consider those of VLE ( or Conglomerates). Conglomerates are made up of multi-industry well just multi-everything! Look at GE, or Disney or Amazon.

We are involved with an enterprise that owes a Curated Art Museum, a Hotels Group, Commercial Real Estate, Wineries, Baking companies, an IT Service Company, Frozen Foods,  Chemical Mfg. and more with 100 legal entities across 25 countries and over 70 locations.  This is complexity.

So, considering this when you're doing package selection you have to understand that a $50 million company a $350 million company and an $2 billion company could have complexity characteristics that are very similar. So how do you handle that?

Well, I'm not going to say that there is a one size fits all approach to this, there never is, and this usually gets back to organizational design, culture and long-term business strategy. But I'll stop here by saying most of these companies from an IT perspective, because of the amount of acquisition or divestiture or natural growth are living in managed chaos and a transition to a single solution is likely impossible.

Let's step back and look at the maturity model again, so we have entry players, high growth gazelle organizations and then large enterprises that or either in a growth or stewardship-based environment.

Let me add about 10 years ago I wrote a paper about founder lead privately held companies versus generational lead private companies or private companies led by non-family outsiders chosen by the founder or generational ownership. I also compared these to small to medium public entities in some cases went private to public with the generational ownership stepping away.

If you'd like to see that paper send an e-mail to ancirs@ancirs.consulting. It's in revision today and will be available by year end.

Why ANCIRS. Well, I couldn't use Answers for a number of reasons in some case it infringed on other uses. Yes, ANCIRS in my little world is pronounced as answers. 

I'd like to get back to the selection of enterprise applications based upon business maturity size and complexity. There is no ERP solution in the top 25 list that would not likely work to provide the core blocking and tackling for any new business entry into the market. But you should consider industry focused solutions especially in the services industries. While many of the top five to ten ERP solution have broad industry coverage in the service industries the niches have very different characteristics than other industry groups. This is not to say that those top ten players don’t, but at the entry level modality I would consider detailed focus products for your particular service industry. 

Let me define services a little bit more clearly. When I talk about services it's not about service after sales ( you sell an appliance, and it has warranty service and repair included). That's not the services I'm talking about what I'm talking about are services like accounting or legal or advisory or architectural.

There are hundreds of services businesses i think of companies like Lemon Tree the franchise Hair Cutting company, or a small to medium sized plumbing / electrical services company.

Just and added thought, consider the very small businesses like an independent hairdresser or plumber who could use simplistic estimating, service management billing and payment software. These are not ERP solutions but small business solutions that you can run on a simple laptop or as a web application in the cloud.

Well, I’ll end with these thoughts. First, all selections are different. I have my own method, as do hundreds of other advisory entities. Be wary of who you chose to do selections. First, the best selections should be done with maximum independence of the outcome.

That means, the company/person you pick to organize and drive your selection should not bid on the resulting Implementation or Software. They can assist in helping you select an implementation partner, and perhaps be part of your PMO or steering committee and provide independent systems assurance to the projects.

Many selections done by medium to large size implementation partners have tragic flaws in their independence. Most of them have resell relationship with the Top 10 ERP software providers, as well are multi practice providers. ( They do implementation for the top 10 products).

The dangers here are (They look at their bench and ( for example) have a number Netsuite resources sitting idle) this means they lead you to a Netsuite choice to win the Implementation and likely resell the SW)?

Yes, that happens. I know those pressures.  It’s the kind of the reverse of the Marine Corps Motto (God, Family, County, Marines)

Marines = Customer; Country = Practice; Family = Company God = God (no matter what)!

The SI thinks of their Company first, their Practice 2nd and You third) Some would say that God to them is Money.

There is so much more in the selection process that is needed. Platforming options, economic models to exercise and understanding that you’re not just implementing the ERP.  

Your selection provider should have an opinion and in some I’ve been given a vote.

ANCIRS has so much more to say so stayed tuned for more on ERP, CRM, HCM, SCM, AL/ML Best of Breed vs Best of Suite, Cost Neutral Implementation stories, the Project Failure epidemic

About ANCIRS LLP. Our Motto is Success is Cheaper than failure

ANCIRS is a trust and confidence vendor. We provide shared cost at risk-based engagements for our clients. We do selections; we do implementations (but never for those we do selections) We provide project recovery services; we review and help create high performance implementation team models.

We provide Industry X roadmaps, and core Industry advisory skill. 

We say No. We never go native, we won’t just do what you ask, we won’t just spend your money. We will not run away from issues; we walk away when we stop being a value provider.

ANCIRS is the OG  (well not Old Gangsters, but the Old Guys in the room who have earned thier respect and regard long ago and still earning it today). That doesn’t mean we are behind the times, or that we don’t have the YG’s to help (Young Guns).