After years of decline, the global economy is starting to show more positive signs, yet no growth will come on its own. Companies looking to position themselves for growth will face continued challenges: increased competition, continually changing markets, pressure to go global, and the need to control costs will all be felt more acutely.
As a result, we are seeing a growing number of companies replacing their old ERP solutions and looking for a new enterprise class solution to streamline their operations and give them a competitive advantage. In that search they typically find SAP & Microsoft Dynamics AX. But as Hal outlined in his recent blog, companies that choose SAP may be sacrificing organizational agility for the benefits of ERP—and in a fast-moving market such as the one that we see now, that’s a trade many can’t afford to make.
In targeting the mid-market, SAP has under its SAP Business All-in-One (BaiO) bundled a set applications—which can require integration to work together—and repackaged its enterprise offering using a set of preconfigured templates. While the templates may allow faster implementation, they also lock your business into a set of preconfigured processes and so called “best practices” (common practices) culled from SAP’s other customers and likely your very own competitors. In a world where the competitive pressures are increasing it begs the question “how can companies differentiate against their competitors if they adopt the same business processes?”
SAP will tell you that you can modify BaiO, but make no mistake: under the hood, BAiO is the same monolithic application that SAP sells to its largest customers. With hundreds of millions of lines of code, and 300 thousand of screen, even the simplest changes can require extensive development and testing.
You probably didn’t get to where you are today by standing still or mimicking your competitor, is now the time to pour electronic concrete into your company?
At Microsoft we recognize that all enterprises are different. We offer solutions that are the right-size for your organization, and that won’t force you to choose between organizational agility and the benefits of ERP.
For more information about Dynamics AX and SAP, check out this site.