The late nineties were the heyday of ERP. These large packages allowed you to tackle a lot of things; from purchases to planning, and from relation management to production. At the time, it was an enormous step forward. But in this item, you will find out why you would rather upgrading your outdated IT landscape to a future-proof and best-of-breed technology.
It seemed so nice: an all-in-one solution for your manufacturing business. A one-time purchase for a package that would practically support all your business processes from that point on. And it did go well for a long time, but soon enough big challenges reared their head. Because such a package is expected to support a large number of different processes and types of businesses, you would end up with a massive amount of settings. Moreover, it turned out that customization was needed more often: because your logistic process didn’t completely fit within the standard solution, you paid a small fortune on customization solutions and the corresponding consultancy. With that, legacy software overshot its target. And thanks to the rise of the cloud born technologies we know that it can be done differently.
Since we’ve all gone online, outdated on-premise tools have hard time catching up with the cloud born software solutions. Think fantastic programs to control CRM, and state-of-the-art CPQ software. We call this ‘best-of-breed’, a term you might also hear at dog shows. We like to call it ‘the best horse in the stable’.
Best-of-breed brings a number of large advantages in comparison to traditional all-in-one-solutions:
Most future-proof tools are emphatically designed to meet your needs. And since it only has to carry out one task really well, you won’t be overwhelmed by an uncountable number of other functions. On top of that, often very flexible possibilities to connect with other applications are available, turning this into a very best-of-breed solution. For instance, you can easily add new tools or replace existing tools.
This flexibility mostly originates in the fact that we do everything in the cloud these days. By working in the cloud, you are able to connect APIs from one tool to another in a relatively quick and easy manner. In the past, all of this had to be done on premise: the server of your business had to gain a custom solution to support new functionalities. And customization costs a lot of time and money.
Many companies claim to be future-proof, but in reality, they may not be as future-proof as they claim. One of the main reasons for this is the difficulty in integrating software with other software applications. In today’s interconnected world, the ability to integrate software is critical for companies to remain agile and competitive.
Companies that have invested in legacy software may find it difficult to integrate with new, cloud-based solutions. This is because legacy software was not designed with integration in mind. As a result, companies may have to resort to costly and time-consuming custom integrations that may not work as well as they should.
When you choose best-of-breed, you choose the future-proof. Are you curious about our best-of-breed CPQ software? Request a demo.
Elfsquad removes all worries from your pre-production process. With Elfsquad as backbone, we realize the digital factory that smart industries have been trying to find for so long. We do this through a product configurator, with integrated solutions for marketing, sales, and operations.
Let us know what you think.