Tue, Oct 6, 2009 11:58 EDT

Bringing Down the House of Enterprise Software

Like casinos, enterprise software vendors will always win. But a new group is stepping up to the table to help customers.

Topic: Applications

Current Rating: Comments: 6

For many enterprise software buyers, a nagging feeling that the deck has always been stacked in favor of the vendors selling the software became all the more noticeable last fall. Market crashes tend to adjust business focus rather quickly.

Large software vendors are, essentially, casino owners. They make the chips. They make the rules of the game. And as much as they talk about "taking care of the customer," they know the odds are so heavily tilted in their favor that they're always going to win.

When their customers win, the vendors win. But when their customers lose, the vendors still win.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough voices in the business world saying: "That's not right, or fair, or logical." My analysis on the inherent problems that still haunt ERP software environments (Why ERP Is Still So Hard) proves that CIOs and their business peers remain largely dissatisfied—which is the sanitized, "PG-13" version of that frustration.

There are, of course, strategies for enterprise software buyers to employ against the House and win a hand or two—or, perhaps more realistically, not get fleeced as much as in the past.

With that sentiment in mind, a small band of brothers has formed to offer a voice of dissent, of reason, against software vendors' practices that frustrate and flummox today's enterprise. They call themselves the Enterprise Advocates, and their mission is simply to "promote the interest of the enterprise tech buy side in the buyer-vendor relationship."

So who are these self-described Jiminy Crickets of the enterprise tech world?

For sure, they are Davids to the software industry's Goliaths—but their collective experiences and voices amount to a worthy slingshot.

There's: Ray Wang, who is a partner with Altimeter Group and former Forrester analyst; Vinnie Mirchandani, founder of Deal Architect and former Gartner analyst; Frank Scavo, who is managing partner at Strativa; Oliver Marks, a partner at the Dachis Group; and Dennis Howlett, who has nearly four decades of experience in financial IT systems and is a popular ZDNet blogger. (You can read their full bios here.)

For too many years, big enterprise software vendors have been—just like the casinos—the only game in town. Look out, Big ERP: There are new players stepping up to the table.

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Wed, Oct 7, 2009 10:57 EDT

Bringing Down the House of Enterprise Software

Posted by: Anonymous
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The industry has been saying this ever since IBM created MAPICS the forerunner of ERP.

At the end of the day you either go with integrated solutions and suffer a little functionality loss or go with functionality and suffer with the integration.

Personally I believe in the integrated solution everytime.
But not so fast, lets have some details here. ERP is not dead. What do these Davids propose more ether ware? I think this report is just a bit of stirring the pot.

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Fri, Oct 9, 2009 11:46 EDT

Education and Architecture

Posted by: benbree
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To bring down the house of enterprise software requires two things – education and architecture. Most purchasers of ERP software get information regarding the software from the vendors. To change this, business folks need to learn about technology building blocks early before consulting a vendor. The building blocks of an organization reside in the business architecture. This architecture describes the business goals. With these business goals, one derives requirements for business success with no link to a particular technology. As long as the vendor educates the prospect and drives the architecture to fit their software, the house of enterprise software wins.

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Fri, Oct 9, 2009 15:38 EDT

Bringing Down the House of Enterprise Software

Posted by: duttpr
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Finally a group with established credentials taking up the issue of the colossal waste, verging on almost fraud, perpetrated by the so-called 'Tier 1' ERP vendors. I am looking forward to their webinars, analysis and reports. As a first step I would suggest destroying the stupendous myth of the 'Tier 1' designation used in the media and by the ‘other’ big name diverse research/consulting groups - thus implying superior product quality for the insanely higher costs. Have ANY of the customers of these 'Tier 1' products EVER had ANY positive ROI of ANY kind whatsoever in the last 20 years by implementing these products? Just to keep matters transparent my company is also in the ERP software/consulting ('Tier ?') business.

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Mon, Oct 12, 2009 18:00 EDT

...

Posted by: MontanaMichael
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You over did the artistic flair on this article, its barely readable.

Integrated solution or custom programming two sides of the same evil coin flipped by people who believe technology is the solution to every problem.

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Wed, Oct 21, 2009 13:40 EDT

Re: two sides of the same evil coin

Posted by: THI
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You don't see a viable alternative to both an "integrated solution" and "custom programming?"

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