Postmodern ERP Strategies: Rip and Replace

Another in the series of postmodern ERP Strategies. While these are excerpted from SAP Nation 2.0, the concepts can be applied to many other ERP environments.

While this is an extreme move, many midsized companies especially those being spun off or being taken over by private equity investors often look at that "life event" as an opportunity to replace SAP products. In SAP Nation, for example, I had described Inteva's move to Plex upon its spinoff from Delphi, the large auto component supplier.

Still other SAP customers are switching to NetSuite products. Commco LLC, a distribution and light manufacturing company, RedBuilt, a commercial construction contractor, and Penguin Computing swapped out Business Suite. Brother Max, which focuses on care and feeding products for babies and toddlers, replaced SAP’s BusinessOne with NetSuite. Adminovate, an enterprise software and consulting provider in the life, health and annuities industries, replaced SAP Business ByDesign with NetSuite.

In SAP Nation, I had profiled how Middlesbrough Council in the UK was replacing SAP with Unit4. Unit4 has since told me about similar moves at U.S.-based Travel Leaders Group, a $20 billion travel management company, the German government entity Staatsbetrieb Sächsisches Immobilien- und Baumanagement and Netherlands-based CGIAR, an international consortium of nonprofit agricultural research organizations.

More excerpts over the next few days.