Business Technology Innovation

Continuing on the earlier discussion on what path a company can takes when it grapples with dual ERP…

Decision: Go for Option-A – Retain both QAD and SAP but leverage them in an effective way.

What is the business case for existence of dual ERP here?

ABC Inc has inherited QAD and SAP across plants and divisions. Both the ERP’s are in different states in terms of maturity and life cycle.

ABC Inc, after due analysis of (1) Cost & Time and (2) Optimum TCO, presents the following compelling arguments.

1.    Take advantage of the inherent strength of QAD and SAP to meet company’s long term requirements.

2.    Realign the current model to provide best of breed business process solution across the enterprise

3.    The cost of realigning the solution in their case is more effective than complete replacement.

4.    Incorporate and implement Shared Services, Master Data Management and Best of Breed processes.

Dual ERP architecture

However, ABC will have to address the following issues:

1. Since BI / DW will be receiving data from 2 ERPs – e.g. GL coming from SAP and operational data coming from QAD, it will have to eliminate any possible reconciliation issues.
2. Introduce a MDM system which will interface with QAD and SAP to effectively address data model issues. This will address data duplication, data integrity and data enrichment requirements.

ABC Inc arrives at a revised IT ecology of

QAD for Manufacturing, Inventory, Sales and Distribution and

SAP for Purchasing and Financial incl consolidation.

ABC achieves the dual structure with 30% reduction in cost and time for execution. But how does ABC plan to achieve 30% reduction in cost & optimum TCO in this approach? It has to contend with implementation of both QAD & SAP and yet attain cost balance.