The article provides a 10-question framework for making the best-of-breed versus integrated suite decision.
There are other practical factors e.g.:
– licensing cost there may be a signifcant difference for a specific piece of functionality e.g. for a Payroll system a specialist payroll solution may charge only for payroll clerk licences, whereas an erp system may also charge for each employee record- so the cost effectiveness of either solution will signifcantly depend on the number of employees, planned growth, and how long each employee’s record must be retained
– ease of expansion e.g to add other companies in different verticals, with different language, different base currency etc
– ease of integrating to a head office system – connectivity options and costs may also affect the choice
– where are your trading partners headed – self service inquiries? edi? rfid? lean, cross supply chain collaboration?
– will each component always be compatible with the same operating and database versions – how often does each they issue new realeses what does this mean for uinterfaces, pgrades and support?
– how easy is to to report, or to integrate to BI or office tools to provide alternative options
– can you build worklofws across the applkciation?
– how will you keep master data conssitent if it is created and maintained in mutliple applications with different fleld size constraints, different manadatory fields, different approaches to data e.g dimensions or attributes or structured master data,
– different security profiles to align,
– what if you wanted to sell some, or all of your business?
– will the IT investment add to your balance sheet as an asset from an investor’s perspective?
– how will the annual maintenance support costs vary if running different systems?
– do solutions come from the same vendor? does he have similar contracts with all the software authors? You do not want multiple different vendors changing prices, support SLAs etc nor to have each blame the other’s software when something does not work.
This is a cautionary tale
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/sap-waste-management-settle-lawsuit-563
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