Few debates in enterprise technology generate as much heat and as little light as the comparison between cloud and on-premises ERP costs. Advocates of each approach produce analyses that, unsurprisingly, favor their preferred option. The truth is that a fair comparison is possible, but only if it accounts for every category of cost over a […]
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Ask any manager where time disappears in their organization and approvals will feature prominently in the answer. A purchase request waits for a signature. A software license sits in someone’s inbox. A contract exception circulates by email until someone remembers to chase it. Each individual delay may seem minor, but collectively they slow the business […]
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My first job out of college was in an accounts payable department, and I still remember the stack. Every Monday morning, a tower of paper invoices sat on the corner of my desk, and my job was to key each one into the system, match it to a purchase order and chase down whoever forgot […]
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General-purpose ERP systems are remarkably capable, but they were designed to serve many industries at once. A food manufacturer, a professional services firm, and a medical device company all share common needs in finance, procurement, and human resources. Their core operations, however, differ profoundly. Historically, each company filled the gap through extensive customization, which made […]
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Every IT organization maintains a backlog of requests for small applications and workflow improvements that never quite rise to the top of the priority list. Low-code platforms offer a way to address that backlog by allowing people outside IT, often called citizen developers, to build workflows and simple applications themselves. The opportunity is considerable. So, […]
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Every few years, IT leaders face the same big question about file and content management: should we build our own solution on raw cloud storage, or buy a ready-made platform? In 2027, with AI reshaping what content tools can do, the answer matters more than ever. Both paths can work. The right choice depends on […]
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I have been involved, at various points in my career, with companies preparing for public offerings and for sale to strategic or financial buyers. One lesson has remained constant. Investors and acquirers do not merely examine a company’s financial results; they examine the systems and controls that produce those results. A company whose numbers are […]
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Some years ago, I was asked to examine why a mid-sized organization took nearly three weeks to provide a new employee with a working laptop and system access. Each department involved insisted that its own part of the process took only a day or two. They were correct. The problem was not the work itself. […]
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A controller I know told me about the first time she asked a generative AI tool to summarize a variance report. The summary was beautifully written, confident and clear. It was also wrong about one of the numbers. Not wildly wrong, just wrong enough that it would have raised eyebrows in a board meeting. She […]
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I am often struck by how many ERP programs declare success on the basis of a single fact: the system went live. That is an achievement, certainly, but it is not the outcome the organization invested in. The real question is whether the business now operates better than it did before. Answering it requires a […]
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Once an organization commits to workflow automation, an immediate question arises: where should it begin? Nearly every department can produce a list of processes it would like automated, and the combined list quickly exceeds any reasonable capacity. Choosing poorly can consume a year of effort on a process that delivers little value. Choosing well builds […]
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