[carpal]

1) I don't think so. The real win is for an ERP is not processes, it is reporting. Being able to examine every aspect of the business in ONE place in a real-time fashion is an amazingly huge boon for businesses. Businesses succeed not because of good processes, but because of constant improvement. You can't improve if you don't know what to improve. A good ERP implementation will solve this with good reports.

2) For a startup, small businesses might actually be better. They might still be able to spend a decent chunk of change (.25-1M) on an ERP system, but have much lower requirements making an easier implementation that is less likely to fail.

3) ERPs aren't really modular, that is true. I'm not sure there is a win to a real "modular" ERP system. The who idea behind an ERP is that everything in a business is connected, so the systems should be connected too. Sales people are connected to orders are connected to finished goods are connected to build processes are connected to inventory are connected to purchase orders. Removing one "module" in that chain defeats the purpose of the ERP.

[boredguy8]

1) While that's nice in theory, the dashboard data has to come from somewhere. And it comes from the processes people go through. Combining the multiple application interfaces into one isn't merely a process of collecting data: it's also collecting processes. If all you had to do was collect data, ERPs would just sit at the junctions of your current data interconnects and feed all the data upwards. But that's not what happens.

2) I agree that smaller is better. But smaller isn't better when it comes to being able to set up requirements.

3) And it shouldn't. I should be able to say, "We're now doing A B C 4 E instead of A B C D E" and not have that change (assuming it's low enough) initiate a 4 week process of review before it ever has a chance of "going live". That -keeps- people from making the suggestions that evolve an organization.

Thanks for the comments.