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Ask HN: Are ERP's overpriced databases?

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Re: Ask HN: Are ERP's overpriced databases?

#11
The promise of ERP that drove people from best-of-breed application portfolios to monolithic systems was primarily the efficiency of integration. That is, your payables, treasury, etc. would automatically post to the general ledger and utilize unified master data (customers, products, vendors).

Ironically, in large scale (SAP-class) enterprises today, the integration problems are often relate to the fact that they are running multiple ERPs they picked up through acquisition and run customized business rules that cannot be cost effectively moved. Look at large scale master data management tools to get a sense of this type of problem.

Much of my work involves mid-market ERP from Microsoft, Sage, Infor, etc. These vendors can give a smaller company an entire integrated suite of tools, with great support, an ecosystem of ISVs fully implemented for $200-300k, including consulting. That remains a compelling value proposition and less risky than hiring programmers, who these companies have no idea how to manage.

One company to watch is Infor. Their strategy involves traditional ERP (usually products tailored for a vertical) at the core, with ancillary products integrated through standard middleware or APIs and delivered through Amazon cloud services.

Re: Ask HN: Are ERP's overpriced databases?

#12
Yes they are. I worked at a place where I had to build some web based reporting/BI apps around the data from an overpriced, proprietary ERP system designed for manufacturing. The Windows based client could have just as easily been a web interface and everything was stored in MSSQL DB's. Granted, there was a crap ton of tables, but nothing that complicated. Once I dug through it all, there really wasn't much to it. Most of the calculations it was doing were straight forward arithmetic. The complex part was just understanding the processes and workflows involved and how they related to the business side of things (ordering, manufacturing, invoicing, purchasing, inventory, accounting, shipping etc, etc.). But technically speaking, it's not that involved. My take away from this experience is, if you want to build a successful ERP app, it's all about usability.
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