Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Buying ERP tools to fit the smaller business
... Hospitals, does not like nasty surprises. In fact, he will make every effort to be sure about the long-term viability of an IT supplier before he does business with them.
When Nuffield Hospitals invested in a suite of e-procurement, inventory management and financial accounting applications, for example, Cook and his team rigorously vetted prospective supplier Lawson Software.
'We spent hours on the internet. We ran credit checks on the company. We analysed its recent financial performance, investigated what City and industry analysts were saying about Lawson and ploughed through a mountain of articles from the trade and business press,' said Cook.
The results of that effort were enough to satisfy Cook that Lawson Software was a safe bet, but Cook pointed out that there were never any guarantees.
'Lawson's management is obviously not going to share its long-term plans with us and, of course, it may get snapped up by a larger company - but I am fairly satisfied that I found no early warning signs of that happening,' he said.
Cook is right to be circumspect, especially when it comes to buying mid-market enterprise resource planning applications. Had Nuffield Hospitals bought software from GEAC, JD Edwards, Scala, Intentia or Marcam in the past two years, for example, it would have seen its suppli"
When Nuffield Hospitals invested in a suite of e-procurement, inventory management and financial accounting applications, for example, Cook and his team rigorously vetted prospective supplier Lawson Software.
'We spent hours on the internet. We ran credit checks on the company. We analysed its recent financial performance, investigated what City and industry analysts were saying about Lawson and ploughed through a mountain of articles from the trade and business press,' said Cook.
The results of that effort were enough to satisfy Cook that Lawson Software was a safe bet, but Cook pointed out that there were never any guarantees.
'Lawson's management is obviously not going to share its long-term plans with us and, of course, it may get snapped up by a larger company - but I am fairly satisfied that I found no early warning signs of that happening,' he said.
Cook is right to be circumspect, especially when it comes to buying mid-market enterprise resource planning applications. Had Nuffield Hospitals bought software from GEAC, JD Edwards, Scala, Intentia or Marcam in the past two years, for example, it would have seen its suppli"
