For those who are heavy in asset management and inventory maintenance with large numbers of external partners, and preferably transportation agencies, what is your experience with the various ERP options? Did you end up with one ERP that includes asset management systems or did you end up with separate systems? Why and how did you end up with that option?

We have developed separate Asset management system with real time connectivity to the ERP systems.. The objective is to implement an asset management system to manage the life cycle of the assets.. not just a repository.. ERP is inflexible in many cases.

In my consulting, I deal predominantly with SaaS and cloud based companies. But from having worked in larger multi-nationals, I am certainly aware of the issues of ERP. Unfortunately, the most honest answer is, "it depends". As you suggest in the question, there are numerous factors that can be at play. That said, most of those companies and my clients are using Microsoft Dynamics 365, which was a process of elimination, but also, because of how it tied into their respective CRM and Office based systems already in place