So You Want to Buy a New ERP System?

As P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said "There's a sucker born every minute". Also, "A fool and his money are soon parted", is attributed to Dr. John Bridges in 1587 and often repeated since.

Both are highly applicable to manufacturing and industrial distribution organizations that purchase a new ERP system in the fond hope that it will solve all their operations management problems.

According to Gartner Research, nearly 75% of these systems fail to meet their original objectives, most take at least two years of organizational disruption to implement, and 17% fail outright.

In this white paper, we look at what, in reality, is an ERP system, what they do well and where they fail to meet expectations for most manufacturers and industrial distributors.

Finally, we look at a better solution, which is to interconnect best-of-breed systems so they work as a cohesive solution to an organization's operations management problems.

This white paper by Peter and Eric Green is intended for the CFOs, materials managers, and other senior managers in manufacturing plants as well as in industrial distribution warehouses that do secondary operations such as repacking, kitting, assembly, and relabeling of products.

To learn more about these issues, please read

"So You Want to Buy a New ERP System? ".