Layering social on top of ERP could be viewed like putting Facebook icing on top of the old ERP (cake) stack.
A complete ground up rethink of ERP goes against the precedents of incremental evolution and senior managements comfortable in avoiding risks.
The type of innovation needed likely matches the leap of faith taken to author purpose built languages for ERP by visionaries unsatisfied with waiting around for oop derivatives C++ and Java.
Three examples that leapt ahead and generated huge ERP profits: ABAP from SAP, Dexterity from Great Plains and X++ from Axapta.
Today, Facebook and SNS peers have leapt ahead utilizing distributed storage of social data using NoSQL from Cassandra, instead of living waiting around for the SQL server database vendors.
Back in 97, MRP/Accounting was redefined as ERP. This meant adding people relationship modules like CRM, SCM, and HRM. Marketing updated the brochures, and sales sold more.
Typically, it’s taken new companies like Agile to add external relationship management for engineering change management. And ERP has been stuck in a rut defined by the code written to live behind the firewall.
Since then, the leap to Enterprise Relationship Pull has been limited to incremental steps within existing ERP products.
An accident of haphazard innovation, from a startup or a lab deliberately focused on solving the enterprise relationship pull problem across the firewall, is surprisingly overdue.
Sameer Patel’s excellent write up on Oracle Fusion covers the technology leader efforts on injecting social into ERP source code.
[My opinion the heart of MRP needs rethinking for relationships]
