Fears for Tiers
Which is better for you as a customer: Your ERP vendor views your company 1) primarily in terms of your size? or 2) primarily in terms of the industry you’re in?
These are two radically different ways to look at customers and to plan and build ERP products. ERP suppliers that segment the market based on size generally divide the world into tiers – essentially small, medium, and large. The supplier then produces a product (or two) for each tier. The idea is that small companies are different from medium size companies which, in turn, are different from large companies. By segmenting the market into tiers, the vendor can supply the “right size” product to the “right size” company.
But what if you’re a growing company? If you’re a small company and expect to grow to a large one, you’ll need to swap out your ERP system twice to stay with the “right” product. You might call the strategy, “Rip and Replace for Growth”. Does that sound like a good growth strategy?
At Lawson, we view customers primarily in terms of their industry. We think a small dairy has more in common with a large dairy than it does with, say, a hospital or a wholesale distributor or an apparel manufacturer. We build our solutions (and our organization) along industry lines, not along tiers. In our dairy solution, we aim to provide the right business processes, and the right content, and the right KPIs for a dairy – regardless of size. We have the same ambitions for our hospital solution, our footwear solution, our local government solution and so on.
Chances are, the size of your company is going to change but the industry you’re in is not. An industry-focused solution is apt to be less disruptive and less risky than a size-based solution. It’s yet another difference between Lawson and the BigCo vendors -- they believe in tiers first, industry second. We do just the opposite.
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