I am finishing the newsletter from St. Louis, preparing for a presentation to the local Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (formerly CLM), on the subject of integrated logistics.

It is relevant to part 2 of our discussion of ERP versus “best-of-breed” supply chain applications, since “integration” of both technology and process is a key factor in the arguments of both sides.

As you may remember from two weeks ago, SCDigest recently completed a major study on the important issue of ERP versus best-of-breed supply chain applications. The result is two reports, one focused on supply chain planning applications, and the other concerning supply chain execution and logistics solutions. We believe they are the most comprehensive study and analysis of this issue that has been compiled to date. Each report is available for subscribers of SCDigest at no charge. You’ll find the link nearby, and on our web site (www.scdigest.com). The reports have already generated a large amount of feedback from readers and both best-of-breed and ERP vendors – we’ll start publishing some of the comments and columns soon.

In part one of our summary of the report results, we noted several of the key study findings, and pointed to the challenges we found in the processes many companies are using to the make this evaluation and decision. This week we’d like to share some additional bits of the data and insight:

	The threshold a company places on the ERP solution in terms of its fit with requirements (and compared to best-of-breed functionality) is strongly influenced by how important the supply chain function is considered within the company.
	While both business users and IT professionals score best-of-breed applications significantly higher on most functional and value-related attributes, perhaps not surprisingly the gap was noticeably less for IT respondents.
	Respondents that claimed a high level of knowledge on the topic showed a wider gap in ratings in favor of best-of-breed than the overall audience.
	Few companies are really doing the right, detailed total cost of ownership and return on investment analyses they need to make an informed decision.
	A growing percentage of companies are adopting a “prove the ERP solution can’t do it” approach, changing corporate buying dynamics, and the way best-of-breed vendors need to present their case.
	Companies need to put more effort in their selection processes in evaluating vendors (ERP or best-of-breed) in finding the proof points that demonstrate how specific capabilities have enabled actual business results.

Our reports include a powerful framework for making this analysis and decision that I think both ERP and best-of-breed vendors would support.

No one thinks we should go back to the days of “application chaos,” with a badly behaved confusion of dozens of packaged applications that don’t much talk to each other. Does that say you should go wall-to-wall SAP, including supply chain solutions? Well, we can’t answer that question, but we can show you in reports what hundreds of companies are saying about this question, and to present a model which if followed will result in a much more fact-based, logical decision that gets all objectives and needs on the table, rather than the hidden agendas and misunderstandings that characterize far too many of these decisions.

Must the ERP versus best-of-breed decision be charged with politics? What has been your experience? Is it too hard for companies to get or determine the real facts? Let us know your thoughts on these questions, or the general ERP versus best-of-breed decision.