One size doesn't fit all.
Looking for "average" in cloud commerce and ERP is a lost cause.
If the cloud were filled with "average" online business operations, what a boring place the Internet would be. But it's not! Just like your favorite people in the world, great online businesses have unique motivations and special qualities that make them stand out from the crowd.
The game-changers, innovators, and wildly successful cloud commerce operations are never "average." On the contrary, they are actively honoring whatever it is that makes them exceptional. What makes your business exceptional? Read more.
Mike Bates
CEO, HotWax Systems
- Stop Seeking 'Average' in ERP — It Doesn't Exist
- Denise Ganly | Pat Phelan | Carol Hardcastle | Christian Hestermann | Nigel Montgomery
- 2 November 2015
Organizations should not attempt to substantiate, or limit, ERP investments based on "average" costs and benefits, which don't take into account the context. Doing so leads to inaccurate budgeting and increased risk, for both the enterprise and the responsible ERP leader.
Key Findings
- Organizations attempt to substantiate ERP investment by seeking averages with which to measure the costs and benefits of such an endeavor.
- ERP leaders who build business cases based on averages don't take into account the context; often leading to budgetary misalignment and unrealizable management expectations.
- Reasons for averages not applying generally fall into four key areas: functional fit, geography, organization and the scope of the project.
Recommendations
- Concentrate efforts on building a clear ERP strategy that meets organizational needs.
- When estimating the effort and cost of implementing a given ERP solution, identify the complexity factors that will influence the outcome.
Analysis
During client inquiries, Gartner receives a long stream of requests for averages — across a spectrum that ranges from licensing to implementation costs to support — on which clients seek to base their ERP investment decisions.1 The analyst response is consistent, "Seeking averages that do not account for context is potentially misleading and always inaccurate." Not accounting for an enterprise's particular context can lead to inadequate budgeting, misalignment of executive and user expectations, potential loss of momentum and potential project failure. Below, we examine the 13 most common averages requested by our clients, the reasoning behind why seeking an "average" is generally ill-advised, and how ERP leaders should instead approach each topic area. For all the reasons outlined here, Gartner does not maintain benchmarking data on "ERP" implementations. It would be impossible to create a meaningful sample size where the projects were comparable, because the individual contexts vary so much.
HotWax Systems
Industry Update: Seven ERP lessons, delivered with style.
To empower customers worldwide, start by empowering your everyday business users.
This was the philosophy that the direct sales gurus at cabi used to launch an ERP system that worked for their company's thousands of stylists, not against them. While the business had flourished by building in-home, personal shopping relationships between stylists and customers, their technology hadn't been built with the relationship sales model in mind.
Their original commerce system was outdated. And their first attempt to modernize it had totally missed the mark.
Industry Update: Platforms should grow with the retailer.
For many of today's leading businesses, being able to design a custom cloud commerce platform that supports multiple layers of operational complexities is critically important to success.
Customization is key for these companies, because what they need doesn't yet exist, says Mike Bates, CEO of HotWax Systems. "The best new ideas haven't been shrink-wrapped yet," he says.
HotWax Systems' open-source software, powered by Apache OFBiz, is designed to empower businesses to think freely and set their own goals without being stifled by system limitations.
Industry Update: Control your cloud commerce destiny.
Exponential growth can be an exciting prospect for an online retailer that's moving up the ladder. But that kind of growth also can be crippling for a business whose digital commerce platform isn't keeping pace.
E-commerce companies with rapidly changing needs can quickly outgrow their e-commerce platforms as they scale their businesses.
In a 2014 Internet Retailer survey, 41.4% of respondents said they expected to replace their e-commerce platforms within a year. Another 22.3% planned to do so within one to two years.
