How Much Does an ERP Implementation Cost?
More than anything at Third Stage Consulting, we enjoy educating and partnering with clients. While everyone would love an answer to how much an ERP implementation will cost, the reality is, it’s somewhat of a moving target. There are many critical dependencies that impact costs, and how you think about cost is important too. Let’s […]
Lessons from the 2020 ERP and HCM Report
The digital transformation landscape is changing at a breakneck speed. Technology is shifting to the cloud, new functional capabilities are being added at a record pace, and companies implementing these technologies are themselves going through unprecedented changes as well. Against this backdrop, we recently published our 2020 ERP and HCM Report. This annual report captures […]
Avoiding Land Mines During your ERP Software Selection
There are endless blogs on software evaluation best-practices and steps to take, such as documenting requirements, requesting demonstrations, negotiating, etc., and then there are the details within these steps that will crush your initiative if ignored. The phrase “The Devil’s in the details” holds very true for software evaluation. An effective ERP selection process can […]
Why Digital Disruption is Overrated
Industry analysts and academics often tout the concept of digital disruption as a good thing. But the reality is that while technology has the ability to positively transform your business, it is more likely to create operational disruption of the negative kind. Digital disruption vs. operational disruption For example, while many companies look to disruptive […]
The 4 Pillars of ERP Implementation Success in 2020
We have seen a recent rush of requests for ERP implementation assessment and project recovery. Despite vendors’ use of accelerators and ERP software best practices, ERP implementations are becoming more and more difficult. Reasons for this include the complexity of system capabilities, the number of integrations needed as well as an absolute onslaught of data. […]
What is ERP Software? Explaining to My Kids What We Do
Although we advise clients on it every day, ERP software isn’t a commonly known term outside of the IT and consulting industry. Understanding the basics of what ERP software is and how it works is something that we often take for granted as independent ERP consultants. With this in mind, I set out to teach […]
SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud: Clash of the Titans
When considering new enterprise technologies, many of our clients consider SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud in their ERP software evaluation process. In fact, our upper mid-market and larger enterprise clients choose between these two systems on an extremely frequent basis. In the most recent rankings of the top ERP systems, it’s not surprising that […]
My Company Doesn’t Have an ERP System
We often encounter clients that don’t have a true enterprise resource planning system (ERP). That doesn’t mean they don’t have processes. This isn’t limited to just small companies. We also work with pretty big midsize companies following similar patterns of relying on QuickBooks and spreadsheets. Thus, there must be very real practical reasons why these […]
Self-Serve ERP Software Please
Don’t underestimate the influence of Generation Y (Millennials) or Generation Z (Gen-Z) on how the top ERP systems will continue to evolve. They are changing the rules both as employees and consumers. Their preferences and actions are dramatically altering how businesses operate as well as how they use technology, and at an ever-increasing pace. As […]
Is Business Intelligence the Logical Evolution of ERP Systems?
Many of our blogs talk about the significant advantages of modern ERP and associated digital transformations. Among those advantages, we have discussed how business intelligence is a key ingredient of an effective digital transformation. The last few decades have seen tremendous progress in software development and information technology enabling access to sizable amounts of stored […]
How a Good ERP Consultant is Like a Utility Infielder
Utility infielders are critical pieces of a successful baseball team. They are not everyday players and often are not even starters. They play many positions and roles, many of which are only consistent if there is an immediate or urgent need created by an injury to a starter. So, what makes them so important to […]
Oracle ERP Cloud vs. Oracle NetSuite: An Independent Third-Party Comparison
In the years we have been providing our annual technology-agnostic ranking of the top ERP systems, we have never seen one quite like the list for 2020. Not only were there some surprises on the list – particularly with Service Now, Workday, and SAP S/4HANA – but some vendor products fared better than others. This […]