I always wondered, why wouldn't an in-house developed lean, ERP system would not trump a behemoth like SAP. A few reasons seem plausible.
- No one gets fired for hiring SAP
- Getting an in-house software developer team that can develop an easily extensible / modifiable ERP system is neigh impossible
It is one of my dream to build an alternative ERP system. But it looks like sub-ERP functions (payroll, HR, etc) have been tackled by many companies and they are wildly successful.
Not just developers, but lawyers, accountants, analysts... I think you grossly underestimate complexity of this thing.
We implemented relatively simple income tax reform a few decade ago in small EU jurisdiction. But law makers were very vague in some important details, and there were about 8 different interpretations. We had to implement, run and support all 8 versions for couple of years, until they decided on final interpretation. Non compliance would be fine of couple of million euro.
And that was tiny country of 5 million people with clean newly written laws. Not babylon with 300 years of baggage like US.
> But it looks like sub-ERP functions (payroll, HR, etc) have been tackled by many companies and they are wildly successful.
That's true but TBH, even those that are wildly successful aren't actually that great. I've implemented Workday as a replacement for the user-facing portions of SAP's HR and while it looks good, it's nowhere near as flexible. There's a lot of stuff I would expect to be available in Workday and just isn't. That surprised me as Workday is pretty much the HR market leader.
TLDR; Opportunities are there for new companies to do ERP better. It's not easy though...
The main reason is a third one: You need to have smart and capable business process owners to work with you the right things to build and what to ignore. Most software projects fail because you're giving inadequate or the wrong scope.
