Postmodern ERP strategies: Ring Fence

Gartner has been talking about "postmodern ERP" for a couple of years now:

"Businesses looking to improve administration today can take advantage of lower costs, better functional fit and process flexibility offered by blending cloud applications with on-premises applications in what we now refer to as ‘postmodern ERP.’"

In SAP Nation 2.0 I expanded the definition to showcase 9 customer strategies to modernize their ERP backbone.  Over the next few days I will excerpt some of the strategies.

The second is what I called “Ring Fence”

One common strategy among SAP customers is to "ring fence" back office ERP functionality with specialist solutions. This approach gives them a chance to innovate "at the edge" and learn about newer cloud and other computing models.

Examples include HP, which has ring fenced SAP with Salesforce, Workday, and other SaaS tools. HP also uses E2open for Order Promising and Response Planning, as well as deploying its Supply Chain Planning to synch components from suppliers with its contract manufacturers.

Malher, a subsidiary of Nestlé (a large SAP customer) in South America, uses Infor's supply chain and other functionality. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Kellogg, the cereal company, both use Infor’s Enwisen for their HR shared services around an SAP ERP core. AkzoNobel, the global paint and coatings company, and ABB Power Technologies AB have a variety of Infor functionality surrounding SAP.

Unit4, which focuses on ERP for service industries, indicates that a wide range of its customers use their specific functionality around SAP implementations. ASML, Atos, Capgemini, HEMA and Nationale-Nederlanden are using Unit4’s Absence Management suite to manage long-term absenteeism and ensure their people quickly reintegrate into their working environments. H&M is using Unit4’s Consolidation and Financial Performance Reporting product, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace is using its Travel and Expense Management solution, and Folksam and Mölnlycke use its Cash Flow Planning product. BASF and Achmea use its Statutory Reporting module to manage their monthly, quarterly and annual close processes.

While the book focused on SAP scenarios, the same can be applied to many other ERP environments. More excerpts over the next few days.