ERP selection is a challenge even for us as professionals in ERP selection and implementation.
Every project is unique because every customer is unique and details can determine whether a system is suitable or not. And the ERP market offers an almost unmanageable number of options for ERP systems, from niche players and industry specialists to the top dogs in the market.
As a rule, companies classify their own organization and processes as "simple and largely standardized" and underestimate the complexity of an ERP selection and implementation in many dimensions.
Low requirements do not make ERP selection any easier
In our case, we see the situation as indicated above. As a service provider, we have rather simple ERP processes. We manage projects and services rendered and generate invoices from them.
Admittedly: It is a little more complex in detail, but in principle this is true and should therefore be accepted, that basically almost every ERP should fit for us.
The prerequisite for a future ERP was a SaaS or cloud operationto save us operating and infrastructure costs. After a brief overview of the market and the subsequent Shortlisting of potential solutions had chosen odoo decided.
According to the product description and also in online demos, the odoo ERP system had everything we had seen in terms of requirements. Other products in the shortlist did not seem modern enough or too complex.
ERP selection failed in proof of concept
In practice, our launch failed in the proof-of-concept (PoC) phase. And on a topic that no one had identified as a potential showstopper:
When creating offers and invoices, Odoo from the box did not allow the same article to be entered several times within an invoice, as the model was designed for trade and not for services.
In the consulting industry, however, it is quite normal and unavoidable, as the items "consulting", "concept work" or "development", for example, appear several times in quotations and invoices, as each item line represents the work in a particular phase or of a particular team or person.
After the PoC, go via Go
After the hard stop in the PoC we ended up with a Microsoft solutionwhich we had initially "discarded" from our "shortlist" due to the feared complexity:
In a comparison of Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Finance & Operatons and Dynamics 365 PSA (today PO).
Outlook
Our customers benefit from our own learning curve from our projects.
In the meantime, we know many ERP, CRM and financial systems in detail and are also familiar with the "showstoppers and stumbling blocks" that can be relevant in specific scenarios.
We are not currently using the integration with D365 Finance & Operations. We are overwhelmed by the complexity and power of the solution for our purposes... but we are hoping for a kind of "Swiss Light Edition"...
