[hef19898]

True. People only miss out on the fact that, especially ERP systems, are to a huge extend a colection of process best parctices. By sticking as much as possible to the out of the box solution, not only and release changes or integrations become easier, but you also get a busoness process benchmark and consulting on top, automatically. Benefiting from all that does require so more depth of thought than most upper managers I ever encoutered are willing, or capable of.

[arethuza]

A lot of variation in business processes doesn't have any real justification it's often just "that's how we've always done it".

Edit: There can be risks when an ERP supplier fundamentally fails to understand your business model - SAP managed to do this with a former employer of mine which led them to be shown the door.

[dspillett]

> A lot of variation in business processes doesn't have any real justification it's often just "that's how we've always done it".

Far too often.

Sometimes we fight a bit to convince our clients to actually take advantage of what a modern system can do for them.

Sometimes we have to give in watch the horror unfold as they use our services to hackily re-implement something that is basically a copy of an old desktop app that was a copy of an old mainframe app that was just an automated version of a paper-based system…

[listenallyall]

I always find it amusing when people talk shit about SAP and brag about giving them the boot. SAP already got your money... big deal, you cut off a few years of support fees. SAP grows and grows despite seemingly everybody saying how terrible the product is. My hat is off to them for finding (and heavily compensating) some truly talented salespeople who can consistently resell their turd to CEOs.

[arethuza]

I should have mentioned that they got the boot during the sales process - so they hadn't won the work yet.

It wasn't a criticism of the SAP product - just that they the sales team constantly got a a basic thing incorrect in a rather dogmatic way.

[hef19898]

Then it was the right way to select a provider. Realizing that during implementation is recipe for disaster. Wether it is SAP or someone else.

[crispyambulance]

I mostly agree. However "out-of-box solutions" often ALSO means "one-size-fits-all".

There's flexibility in ERP's, for sure, but it's not necessarily accessible to the people that use it.

I once had to implement a "screen" to physically divert a list of devices with certain serial numbers. Basically: send a notification whenever one of these devices showed up at a loading dock.

The most logical way to do it, which I naively considered first, was to set-up something in one of the ERP modules which is specifically focused on "material movement". After some tedious email exchanges and a phone call it turned out that it was, in fact, "possible". The catch was that it would take WEEKS and involve an expensive Oracle consultant requisition.

I put an end to that and instead had a junior implement the solution in a downstream application (which we actually develop, own and control), in about an hour. It was worth it even though it meant the stuff left the loading dock and ingressed into the building, requiring some additional physical "moving-around" hassles.

[ratww]

> especially ERP systems, are to a huge extend a colection of process best parctices

I would actually go further and say that enterprise ERPs are full-fledged development environments, often with custom languages and code editors. Quality varies wildly, though.

The fact that some of them are able to handle the processes of some companies out of the box is almost accidental.

[marcosdumay]

Well, between those there is also a collection of bad practices that the entire industry shares for some reason (the existence of the ERP being the most likely culprit).

It's not all gain.