Standardization of infrastructure and business process

March 13, 2006 from BPM Today - "Anderson explains that back in 2004 the pressure was on to get economies of scale, and to drive efficiencies and new business opportunities -- which meant real-time information and automation. But that in turn required visibility and standardization -- bringing data together and making it accessible. And to do that, a well-managed and cohesive I.T. and network infrastructure was needed.

"We didn't have that," he says. "From PCs to the ERP system, we needed to do some serious work to get the infrastructure sorted out, settled and stable. So that's what we concentrated on first."...

Attention turned to the business systems themselves -- at the time, a mix of systems across its sites, including BPCS, MTMS, Syspro, and Compass. "They're all great systems, but the company had given the local businesses autonomy, so there was no consistency in set-up or business processes, and a high degree of bespoke software. It had all been done to provide the businesses with what they believed they needed at the time, but it meant the organization as a whole didn't have the visibility it needed. "Also, if we stayed with it, we would be forced to follow expensive upgrade paths that would involve considerable rework simply to replicate existing functionality. We would have spent over £1 million (US$1.7 million) over two years just to stand still." Clearly, not good news, and there was another classic issue. "People were using departmental spreadsheets and workarounds. They were doing a great job, but it's a lot of effort to get information that's out of date."

The bottom line: "We had to standardize: We wanted to maximize consistency and minimize support costs," says Anderson. "We looked at our existing spread of ERP systems and they're all mid-tier applications, and we're a mid tier company, but although they were all doing an OK job, none would do everything we wanted off the shelf."

So he looked at the big guns. "We had the perception that the likes of Oracle and SAP would be too expensive. But we established very quickly that there's a lot more to be had out of a Tier One application suite." He also found that price and the software vendors' focus were not as he'd thought and eventually selected Oracle."

180 View - It's the classic Best of Breed vs ERP debate. In the case of the article being discussed, it sounde like the business processes were similar enough to have 1 system do it all. Although the article says the company being discussed is a "mid tier company", a little research showed that the "APi Group employs over 5,000 people and performs annual revenues in excess of $900 million."