Funny this one.

I remember my former employer buying a multi-million $$ ERP system and giving up on a self-built Cobol-system. Not just because of the development overhead (12 staff!!), but more because Cobol programmers were becoming extinct and we were up for a huge brain drain (10 out of the 12 were to go in pension over the next 3 years). The ERP seemed like the sensible thing to do.

When we were starting the implementation, we were warned by people who had been there and seen it all to adapt our procedures to the ERP, not the other way around. Some responsibilities go to other departments, some come over from other departments, that's what's usually happening in an ERP implemantation. Needless to say things went just the other way because we were unable to convince people that they had to organize their way of working differently. But no: everything was to remain the same.

Five years later, the company's core processes were mostly run by self-built applications, based on VB and SQL server. The ERP being used as little more than a bookkeeping system and as a repository for the core data. All the intelligence residing in the VB applications. Now is that a bad thing ?

I guess I'm going to have to go with Steve here. It's the people that make the business. If one application doesn't get them to work together, get another one that will. Main thing is boxes are being shoved and bills are being sent, any which way but lose:)