Father of ERP process talking about the future of ERP software

Olin Thompson, vice president of Lawson software, has been working in the software field for 25 years and is the ERP project owner. In the past 17 years, he has been devoted to studying industrial processes related to ERP, SCP and e-commerce. He has also been honored as the father of ERP processes ". Recently, he was interviewed by foreign media about the future of ERP software and how to control out-of-control ERP projects.

I. How to control the risk of out-of-control costs in ERP project implementation

Lawson software ceo Olin Thompson believes that the high complexity of the enterprise resource planning system and the huge investment characteristics are still causing headaches for many companies.

Lawson is not a well-known brand in the enterprise IT world, especially in the UK and Europe, but it is one of the ERP vendors that keep up with ERP giant Oracle and sap, it is equivalent to the position of infor.

"If I tell you that all of our competitor projects are bad, it is obviously not true," Thompson said. SAP has thousands of happy customers, as does oracle. What makes things more complicated is that sometimes the cost of implementation will become a runaway project. The question is whether you have an appropriate scope, appropriate expectations, and appropriate project management ."

To eliminate the risk of implementing ERP software, he said his company had created custom templates for specific vertical industries to control implementation costs and software in one dollar, some projects are even charged at a fixed price.

"If you are a footwear manufacturer, we can provide templates for footwear. We have implemented ERP for dozens of shoe manufacturers. We believe that the customer has made a choice and you can save 30% to 50% of the traditional implementation cost by providing the best practices you should follow ."

The apparel industry and retail industry are one of Lawson's strong industries. With the development of economic globalization, the supply chain of this industry is gradually expanding. It is not surprising that China will become a hot spot in the apparel manufacturing industry.

According to Thompson, Lawson has more than 250 garment manufacturer customers in China. He said that the shirts he bought on Brooks Brothers were not produced by Brooks Brothers. They are outsourced to tal apparel, a Hong Kong company that uses Lawson m3's software products. He said one of every seven shirts in the United States was made by Tal.

Ii. software as a service model may not be suitable for ERP

One problem facing all ERP companies is the software as a service (SAAS) model, or the On-Demand Model, which represents salesforce.com. Until recently, SAP no longer refused to stick to its traditional permanent authorization model. It released its business bydesign on-demand application suite, which is also known as the a1s product.
Thompson has always believed that Lawson does not comment on software as a service (SAAS. However, he raised the question about whether the model can meet the needs of more complex enterprise applications in addition to simple sales automation tools, because software as a service (SAAS) the mode provides users with standard software that has not been modified or customized, and everyone runs the same version.

He said, "This is where it begins to fail, because many companies are different from others by unique business processes or special methods for pricing, sales, and inventory management. I have been working on ERP software for more than 30 years. I know that every time I contact a new customer, he says, 'We are willing to follow the standards as much as possible ', but later it became 'but in this place it is the basis for our business creation, and we are competitive, so we need software to implement this special location '."

He admitted that sap may succeed in its software as a service (SAAS) product in the low-end small business market, but he also said, time will prove whether they are a successful leap.

"We are not trying to lead a war to show that you must be a permanent authorized customer. We don't pretend to know the answer to all these things. However, nothing has changed dramatically among the numerous enterprises that have successfully implemented the software-as-a-service model. There are only a few software as a service (SAAS) applications that you can point out. The first is sales automation, and the second is some human resource management applications ."

Lawson itself uses salesforce.com, but Thompson said that the company's success was primarily driven by Marc Benioff, its legendary CEO.

"What does salesforce.com do? Category and report. This is all. There is no algorithm. It adds a column of data and then gives you a report. This is an imaginative report mechanism, but it does not carry out complex mathematical algorithms and cannot interact with many customers at the same time. I have asked Marc Benioff many times, 'you are so supportive of this model, why don't you develop other applications? 'The other programs are not that simple '. His words prove my opinion, "Thompson said.
Iii. "silly" ERP development tools and opinions on acquisitions

One of Lawson's most critical projects is its landmark project, which has been under development for the past five years. In essence, landmark is a development tool that allows non-technical personnel using ERP systems to easily create a Java-based application with their unique industry experience, all you need to do is to fill in some parameters and requirements.

Thompson said that it is somewhat similar to object-oriented programming. Based on a model called "Pattern Language principle", it creates a library of reusable patterns.

"We found that the number of lines produced by the traditional Java code is also reduced to 5% compared with that written manually. If it requires less encoding, it will be more efficient, so it can run very quickly. Second, it has fewer errors, "Thompson says.

Landmark recently stepped out of the lab and is currently being used by Lawson's own service staff. Thompson says it will be available to customers in about a year.

On the acquisition topic, Thompson was very calm. Although he said Lawson had prepared to look for another target after completing and integrating intentia 18 months ago, he criticized the uncontrolled acquisition of his rival infor.

"Infor is now suffering from all its acquisitions that cannot be digested. They spend too much time on their own businesses and their own customers. I used to be in a game of purchase, so I knew that you could not allow all 32 products to develop at the same time and invest in all of them. The purchase must be reasonable ." Thompson said.

Speaking of Lawson's future, Thompson pointed out that he had spent $0.5 billion in capital revenue in two years in charge of Lawson, and the company's share price had doubled.

"What we do is to reverse the business and eliminate people's concerns. We have invested a lot of money and 45% of our authorized revenue comes from new customers, "Thompson said.