Wall Street Journal: Business Use of Ipads

Businesses Add iPads to Their Briefcases Some Companies, Which Barred the iPhone, Build Apps for Tablet Computer and Give Apple Gadget to Employees

Tip of the iceberg.

Links: ERP Market Searching for "New Value"

Here are articles, which discuss opportunities in the ERP industry, as IT managers continue investing in new value-add opportunities to their legacy investment.

ERP Investments Still Top the List for Corporate IT Spending

Forrester Research survey data shows that more than two-thirds of companies are still investing in their ERP systems--despite the recession, upgrade costs and maintenance fee complaints.

The Future of ERP

Since the dawn of automated, electronic capture of corporate financial, operations, supply chain, HR and sales information data—what's become, more or less, ERP—companies have cumulatively spent billions, if not trillions, on managing and trying to extract value from their vast data repositories.

ERP: How and Why You Need to Manage It Differently...Computerworld. Excellent discussion of real-world ERP managers and how they are testing a path forward.

ERP isn't much different today than the technology early adopters installed 15 years ago. But new technologies make traditional ERP seem dated. "The concept of ERP is not dead, but the technology under it is," says Bill Brydges, managing director of the ERP practice group at the consultancy MorganFranklin.

Cloud computing, mobile applications, social knowledge sharing and predictive analytics present trouble spots for CIOs trying to move ERP systems into the future.

Meanwhile, Christensen advises, CIOs need to keep making noise about bringing in upstart vendors that offer the technology the big guys don't. CIOs Galonis at Choice Hotels and Harten at Haworth are doing just that as they pressure their current vendors to hurry up with new capabilities.

Further out, Stanec, for one, dreams of seeing ERP vendors develop packages that help companies generate revenue. "Then," he says, "we'd have something interesting to negotiate."

A New Source of ERP Value

CIOs want better integration of analytics for data insight.

The same could be said for mobile.

60 Billion/Year in Waste Due to Poor Software Design

From a CIO interview, coverage of Wrench in the System, a book that discusses the long-term problems with ERP software:

"Wondering why your company's staffers are using only a fraction of the software features and functionality that your bounteous enterprise software offers?

Harold Hambrose can give you an answer. In fact, Hambrose, founder of Electronic Ink, a consultancy specializing in designing and developing business systems, wrote a book about what he claims is the $60 billion that U.S. businesses will waste this fiscal year on poorly designed software."

It's easy to point out these problems, but as any IT manager can attest, it's very difficult to get agreement between groups of people as to how to "fix" the problem.

In many organizations, the problems are deep, and political.

That's where the iPad is a fantastic opportunity...a good rallying point, that could help your organization get past the problem of poorly designed software. It's new, it's technologically stunning, and it's popular.

Harness that popularity and "love affair with the new" to drive your projects forward.

ERP and iPad Part 3: $61 Billion in 2009

From AMR Research. Of course, this is per year, so the cumulative spending on ERP software over the past 20 years is many hundreds of billions.

ERP and iPad Part 2: User Dis-satisfaction

In Part 1 we talked about the general problems in the ERP industry. In our experience, the biggest of these problems is user dissatisfaction. Look at this graph from a presentation on ERP usage:





























Only 4 of the 27 categories listed showed user adoption rates above 50%. Half the categories listed had user adoption less than 10%.

After decades of effort and uncounted hundreds of billions of dollars spent on enterprise application software, that is not a great showing. These user adoption problems have many causes...just surf the available literature to see discussions of this.

The question important to us is: what is a solution? We believe that a great solution, and a way to heal the rift between IT and users, is to provide a friendly, more user-centric access point to ERP, via the iPad.

"Enterprise Software Bereft of Soul" WE HAVE AN APP FOR THAT

In his excellent and highly recommended blog, Vinnie Mirchandani discussed a quote by Dave Giroud of Google:

“Enterprise software is entirely bereft of soul”

Most enterprise software developers know this, and it can be mental torture to know that you work in an industry that seems so...well...soulless, so un-sexy, yet with so much un-realized potential.

Let's take a moment to consider that the New Wave of Revolutionary and Magical Mobile Tools (from Apple, and very soon, from a raft of other heavy hitting vendors) could be just the thing to spice up the enterprise industry.

To be blunt, we think that mobile tablets and smartphones are exactly the right tools to dramatically improve enterprise software...to add sex appeal and usability and to solve long-standing, significant pain points for customers.



[7/23/2010] Vinnie's new book: an amazing read:

ERP and iPad Part 1: Problems in ERP Industry

The ERP (enterprise application) market for large corporate software, one of the 3 largest sectors of software sales, is in big trouble, and has been for a long time. This isn't news to people in that industry...it is continually discussed. Here's a good summary article in CIO Magazine.

"The survey, based on the ERP experience of 214 business executives across a wide variety of midsize and larger industries, found that today's ERP systems "are not providing businesses with the architectural agility necessary to support businesses adequately in today's high-change, global environment."

That's not too shocking. But what is notable about the results (and what makes them different than your garden-variety ERP study that shows sky-high TCO, or application performance problems, or unfavorable implementation odds), is that this survey actually quantifies ERP system-related failings directly to business disruption—expensive, unpleasant and career-killing business disruption.

"Survey respondents said that the inability to easily modify their ERP system deployments is disrupting their businesses by delaying product launches, slowing decision making and delaying acquisitions and other activities that ultimately cost them between $10 million and $500 million in lost opportunities," according to the survey report. (That's a substantial gulf in "lost opportunities," but we'll chalk that up to the size differences in companies surveyed.)

That related impact is costly: 21 percent of respondents reported declines in stock price; 14 percent suffered revenue losses tied to delayed product launches; and 17 percent encountered declines in customer satisfaction.

A couple of verbatim responses from respondents should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up: "Capital expenditure priorities are shifted into IT from other high-payback projects" just to perform necessary ERP changes, noted one respondent. Said another: "Change to ERP paralyzes the entire organization in moving forward in other areas that can bring more value."

How can the iPad and iPhone help fix this ERP industry problem? That's the question that our group has been studying and will discuss more in future posts.