ERP and the Dentist

Way Less Pain
I was just at the dentist yesterday having a tooth fixed and was amazed at how pain-free the experience was. The fear and anxiety were still there, but I got through it with no new bad memories.

Needless Delay
I had been delaying this procedures because I was getting along just fine as I was. I heard what the dentist said about how good things would be afterward and how this would last a long time, etc. But in the back of my mind was the pain of dentist visits of my youth and early adulthood. Those thoughts caused me to delay and risk further damage to my tooth.

Times Have Changed in ERP Also
It occurred to me as I sat in the chair how similar this is to companies with older ERP systems. They know they should migrate to a newer, more comprehensive, integrated system but they remember the pain and disruption of the last implementation. They know they will reduce costs and improve quality and agility, yet they delay.

SaaS Opens a New World
Much of the pain and suffering of ERP implementations goes away with the SaaS model. Most of the cost, disruption and errors arose from managing server, operating system, database and PC software configurations. Each installation was a science project as the teams tried to get everything to work together. With Software as a Service, users can get right to the work of putting in their data and setting up their business processes in the system. Standardized web services make data migration simpler and faster.

All in all, it is way less painful these days to migrate to a modern, integrated SaaS ERP solution. Users shouldn’t continue to live with a system that “works” but doesn’t drive their business forward simply for fear of past pain.

Mark Symonds, CEO of Plexus Systems, Inc., is an operations expert with 25 years of experience. His blog is about the convergence of ERP and the on-demand (software as a service) delivery model, and its impact on manufacturers.