Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: Industry Best Practices + Flexibility
- by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
By Richard Garraputa, VP of Sales & Marketing, brij
Richard joined brij in 1996 after
graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with degrees in
Information Systems and Accounting. He directs brij’s overall strategies of
both the business development and marketing departments.
Companies looking for new ERP systems spend so much time
comparing features and functions of software products but too often short
change the value of their own processes. Company managers I meet often
claim that they are implementing a new ERP system so they can perform better
and faster. When asked how, the answer is often “by implementing best
practices”. But the term ‘best practices’ is frequently used to mean
‘doing things the way everyone else does them’ rather than a starting point or
benchmark to build upon by adding your own value.
Of course, implementing standardized processes across an
enterprise is an important step in improving operational efficiencies.
But not all companies are alike. Do you ever tell your customers “We are
just like our competition and have no competitive differentiation”?
Probably not. So why should the implementation of your business processes
be just like your competitor’s? Even within the same industry, companies
differentiate themselves by leveraging their unique expertise and approach to
business. These unique aspects—the competitive differentiators that
companies use to thrive in a crowded marketplace—can and should be supported by
the implementation of business systems like ERP.
Modern ERP systems like Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
have a broad and deep functional footprint designed to integrate a company’s
core operations. But how can a company take advantage of this footprint
without blowing up their implementation budget? Some ERP vendors claim to
solve this challenge by stating that their systems come pre-configured with
‘best practices’. Too often what they are really saying is that you will
have to abandon your key operational differentiators to fit a vendor’s template
for your business—or extend your implementation and postpone the realization of
any benefits.
Thankfully for midsize companies, there is an alternative to
the undesirable options of extended implementation projects or abandoning their
competitive differentiators. Oracle
Accelerate Solutions speed the time it takes to implement JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne solution based on your unique business characteristics, getting
your new ERP system up and running faster without forcing your business to fit
a cookie-cutter solution. We’ve been a JD Edwards implementation partner since
1986 and we now leverage Oracle Business Accelerators—cloud based rapid
implementation tools built and maintained by Oracle. Oracle Business Accelerators deliver the
benefits of embedded industry best practices without forcing every customer in
to one set of processes like many template or “clone and go” approaches
do. You retain the ability to
reconfigure your applications—without customization—as your business
changes.
Wielded by Oracle partners with industry-specific domain
expertise, Oracle Accelerate Solution implementations powered by Oracle
Business Accelerators help automate the application configuration to fit your
business better, faster. For example, on a recent project at a manufacturing
company, the project manager told me that Oracle Business
Accelerators helped get them to Conference Room Pilot 20% faster than with a traditional approach. Time savings equal cost savings.
And if ‘better and faster’ is your goal for your business
performance, shouldn’t it be the goal for your ERP implementation as well?
Established in 1986, brij has been dedicated solely to
helping its customers implement Oracle’s JD Edwards solutions and to maximize
the value of those customers’ IT investments. They are a Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork and
an Oracle Accelerate
Solution provider.
