I have this quote bookmarked, about ERPS:

"Most companies spend way too much time and money trying to make software work for their processes. Some of these processes haven't changed in years or even decades. Rather than customizing software to work for your processes, it's often easier to reevaluate processes around modern software."

You can have your ERP customized, but you cannot have your cake and eat it (without cost). Ramping up new trading partners, onboarding new staff, whatever it is.

One reason accounting people have it easier than us tech people is they've got a very good clear process. It's rare that anyone mucks with Accounts Payable / Accounts Receivable / Payroll.

So yeah, go on pretending your SMB that manufactures/ships/resells/distributes product/service _________ is unique and needs your own processes, it _will_ bite you in the butt.

>try to run as vanilla as possible.

I can't emphatically agree with this enough.

I've worked on a Siebel 7.5 installation that was so heavily customized by a certain DBS TV company that it's still running to this day because upgrading to a current release means starting over from scratch. There are efforts underway to migrate it to SalesForce but that's been in progress for 3 years and still not far enough along to cut over.

Thanks, appreciate the perspective. But I've been implementing peoplesoft for, dear god, quarter of a century now, so I'm familiar with that unfortunate pattern. I guess I'm more wondering is service now inherently so bad it's unsalvageable, or is it a matter of good vs bad implementation, and resulting business transformation (or lack thereof :).