Insights
One decision shapes the cost of an ERP platform for its entire life more than any other: how much you build and customise versus how much you adopt as standard. Get it right and the system stays affordable and upgradeable for a decade. Get it wrong and every year, and every upgrade, costs more than it should. Here is how to make that decision deliberately rather than by default.
By Christopher Fagan
Use the platform’s standard process. Cheapest to implement, cheapest to run, cheapest to upgrade, because you are on the path the vendor supports and improves. The cost is that your process changes to fit the software.
Use the platform’s built in options to tailor it without custom code. A reasonable middle ground, though heavy configuration carries more of the cost and rigidity of customisation than people expect.
Write custom code or build bespoke functionality. The most expensive at every stage, and the gift that keeps taking, because every customisation has to be maintained and re tested at every upgrade, forever.
Standardise everything except the small number of processes that are a genuine source of competitive advantage. For most of what an organisation does, finance, procurement, standard operations, there is no advantage in doing it your particular way, and every reason to adopt the standard and inherit the vendor’s ongoing investment. Reserve customisation for the few processes that genuinely differentiate you, and be honest that there are far fewer of those than people claim.
Every team believes its way of working is special and worth preserving. Multiply that across an organisation and you get a customisation list that turns a standard platform into an expensive bespoke system that is painful to upgrade. The single most valuable discipline in an ERP programme is challenging each demand for customisation and holding the line on standard wherever there is no real advantage in being different.
For every proposed customisation, ask: does doing this our way create genuine competitive advantage, or does it just preserve a habit? If it is a habit, adopt the standard. This one question, asked consistently, is worth more to the lifetime cost of your ERP than any negotiation on the licence.
We help organisations make these decisions independently, with no incentive to sell you more build. See ERP implementation consulting and what an ERP implementation costs, or get in touch.
If any of this is live for you right now, the senior people who wrote it are the people you would work with.