Large companies the world over rushed to get their ERP implementations completed to beat the Y2K deadline. A bizarre trend is now emerging: the re-implementation of ERP, otherwise known as ERP II. Many large corporations found that, having spent huge sums of money on ERP on the promise of “standard business processes for the measurement of overall business performance” they didn’t quite manage it the first time round. Instead of having different versions of their corporate data locked away in different systems, now they have different versions of their data locked away in multiple, incompatible ERP implementations. Will the money for ERP II be any better spent this time around?

It would be interesting to re-examine those former cost benefit cases for ERP: “Ah yes, we can justify this vast expenditure on the standardization of our business processes, which will have great savings in the business. And of course our IT budget will be greatly reduced as many of our old systems will be replaced by a new package”. Well, if the holy grail of standardized business processes did not occur, where are the benefits? Also, has anyone noticed their overall IT support costs dropping massively after an ERP implementation?

One might imagine a certain amount of chagrin on the part of those managers who recommended the ERP implementation, given that the benefits have proved so elusive. Apparently not. Figuring that the best means of defence is attack, project proposals are now being mooted to “re-implement” the ERP systems in the form of ERP II. Why it is felt any more likely that business processes can be bludgeoned into standardization this time around when they manifestly did not last time is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps it is time to realize that standardization of business processes across a global enterprise is a pipe dream. While general ledgers may indeed be the same, the idea that markets in Italy are the same as those in Japan, or that the business process that makes sense in a huge developed country is appropriate for a new market in a small country, is surely absurd. Even if you could persuade the business managers in a small, developing country to adopt the processes defined in central office, are these not likely to impose unwieldy constraints on the business? And how likely is it that the central office analyst has thought out a strategy that will work equally well in Beijing as in Baltimore?