What would you say is the right scale for something like SAP? We are only at a few million right bald and around 250 people and are starting to think about it.
I would not recommend it at that scale. You’ll grind your sales people down for no good reason, and flush several million dollars down the toilet on a project that will most likely get canceled and several people fired (gotta have fall guys at that level...). The right time to implement an ERP is at the last possible second that you are legally or contractually obligated to, or a make or break $50-100M sales contract is in play. And in the latter case, losing the contract and flushing the SAP project down the toilet are real risks. I’ve lived this project at a company the size you describe and it ended very poorly.
As the other comment stated, I would say you're not there yet, sclae-wise. Hard to tell without further details, so. If you decide to the SAP-route in the future I would advise the following (no complete list by far, so):
- Stick to the standard, the smaller you are the less customization you do. ususally I'd say 90% standard, if you're small aim for 100%. makes it faster and easier to implement. And cheaper, because you need less external resources.
- Wait. SAP is deprecating SAP APO by 2023 (IIRC, something like that). So implementing before that could be a problem. Either you end with a legacy system and have your first release change right after, or during, implementation. And release changes are unique kind of hell themselves. or you end up with a new system that is yet untested. I wouldn't want either of that.
- Try to model your business already now along SAP-processes. First, these processes aren't that bad. especailly for the back office side of things as other pointed out already. Plus, it makes and future SAP implementation a lot easier. Same should be true for other ERP-systems, but I have not that much experience with those. Aside Odoo, which I wouldn't touch with a ten feet pole ever again in my life.
- get external consultants. Really, get them. get the good ones. A lot of hours. At least one for every module of SAP you want to implement. And have one of your own devs sitt on the consultants lap during the project. One per consultant. It's expensive, sure. But less expensive than an aborted SAP-project.
- Invest hours, days, weeks and months in user training. From day one, ideally as soon as you have a test envioronment. Start with key-users, experienced, smart peolple open for change. And work from ther to every singel user of the system. You need their buy in, without even the best SAP-project will fail. These people are alos the backbone for the future, trea them well and listen to them.
In case you want to hear more of my rambling, just shoot me a mail, adress is in my profile.