The Problem with Mature ERP Systems

The word inheritance usually connotes something of value being passed down from one generation to the next. Money is always good, as is expensive art work and other antiquities.

For IT leaders, an inheritance usually refers to enterprise software, which, while valuable from a corporate perspective, certainly comes with its own set of generational and technological baggage.

In fact, a new report from Forrester Research states that most CIOs today have inherited mature ERP systems implemented by predecessors, over which they have little to no control. Consequently, writes George Lawrie in the report (subscription required), enterprises and their ERP systems tend to drift apart.

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"As the years pass, the original implementation team disbands, retires or dies, and the old use cases and best practices start to brown and curl at the edges like the sepia-tinted photos of yesteryear," Lawrie writes. "Like tectonic plates adrift on a sea of magma, ERP instances and the businesses they serve are bound to drift apart over time or dramatically collide with earthquake-like consequences."

CIOs are then left with clean-up duty. Manjit Singh, CIO of Chiquita Brands International, says that there are far too many instances inside companies of enterprise systems that were implemented by a CIO who is no longer there.

Further complicating matters is that while spending on ERP has grown at the rate of 6.9 percent each year, so too has dissatisfaction among end users with those enterprise applications, according to the Forrester report. In other words, ERP is a lose-lose scenario. (See Why ERP Is Still So Hard for more on this topic.)

Lawrie identified several challenges that cause end users, software vendors, consultants and systems integrators to struggle with ERP. Here are four sources of their problems:

Mismatched Rates of ERP Evolution. The chief problem, Lawrie writes, is that "business really does evolve faster than users can recast the 'silicon cement' of ERP using present technologies and practices."

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