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by aryehof 3826 days ago
Every business is unique, and a custom solution can support that uniqueness, rather than the compromises that can need to be made with a (customizable) packaged solution.

I've seen one company write off a 100 million dollar investment in a Peoplesoft based replacement for a custom system, because it was realized that the compromises that solution required were becoming too great. Sure it was fabulous for 80% of requirements, but the other 20% became a giant sinkhole of money and pain.
2 comments
David 3826 days ago
Absolutely, if you have the budget to build, maintain, and support a custom ERP, it may be the way to go. But I think it's a tiny fraction of businesses where the benefits of that outweigh the extra costs involved. You have to be very large, and your issues with existing systems have to be pretty expensive, before that's the case.

Out of curiosity, do you know / can you share what kinds of problems caused the Peoplesoft investment to fall apart? What issues did they run into?

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cafard 3826 days ago
The District of Columbia Public Schools burned what must have been tens of millions on a Peoplesoft implementation some years ago. I guess they eventually got it running, but there was a lot of pain.

[Edit: I'm not sure DCPS was the part of the district government that felt the most pain.]

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