How CIOs grapple with ERP suites?

BANGALORE, INDIA: ERP suites could turn out to be white elephants. Paying 22 per cent AMC and still not getting value is quite nagging.

ERPs do not solve business decision problems as one normally thinks. Applying them on a big scale is nothing short of a double whammy.

The pre-sales talk by vendors never touches the real issues that surface only when a CIO has invested and cannot back out.

The suites sold by companies are standard and hardly tweaked for specific business or country needs. When would the vendors understand that technology should be adjusted to business processes and not the other way round?

When will I find time to stop grappling with technology and focus on what I am supposed to do? Won't it be a double whammy if scale up my ERPs? Am I doing my job right which essentially is to facilitate between end user and technology?

These issues rarely mark their presence in high-brow conferences but if you are a hands-on CIO, caught in the grindstone of managing technology for business, you surely empathize with these coffee-break talks that CIOs vent out and discuss at forums like C-Change.

A quick CIO meet at the fifth edition of CIOL C-Change 2008 brings the curtain down and lists down the many practical concerns that are far more important than glossy topics like SOA and virtualisation.

Rajat Sharma, general manager, IT at Shree Cement, for instance is wondering how Jai Parkash Yadav, general manager, application group, IT at Maruti Suzuki is managing the white elephants of ERP suites as he chats up with him and discusses common concerns.

 "The issues are critical and more so for an organization like Maruti which is much bigger in scale. It must be quite a double whammy to manage ERP issues specially when spread over a scale," he said.

He is airing a concern that many CIOs are battling. Just having a big ERP doesn't deliver information for real-time business decisions as is normally perceived.

"We buy the standard suites but then they do not fit into our specific needs. There's no need-based localisation at all. I end up grappling with technology rather than focusing on business issues." he pours out as he talks about the much bigger costs that come with paying a 22 per cent AMC (Annual maintenance charges).

Ironically, none of these issues are touched in the pre-sales talks, share CIOs.

"It's only when you dive in that you grapple with them. I can't back up once I have invested." he adds.

For a lot of CIOs like him, the issue thus is being the right moderator between the end-user and the technology.

"If I am not able to tackle technology for real business processes, how am I going to enable that for my user." says one.

In fact, business processes should drive technology and not vice versa, as P Mohandas, CIO, Finolex Cables stresses.

"Automation just pushes up numbers in the first stage of implementation but process improvement is the real driver."

Talking of future investments, CIOs will keep balancing fresh ones along with building up on existing deployments. Slowdown is not a frown on their heads yet.

"Investments will continue but the numbers might be different as the costs have come down with the dollar impact." he shares.

In terms of delivery, SaaS will still take about eight years or so to make a mark given cost, scale and other issues.

"Themes like SaaS, SOA are good to talk about but CIOs still understand them only conceptually. The commercial impact and adoption will take a while," says one.

And may be that's why this year's C-Change theme around agility has received a unanimous welcome.

"These are the real issues that keep us awake. These are relevant and practical and not just good talk-vale unlike SOA," comments a CIO.

(pratimah@cybermedia.co.in)