Friday, June 09, 2006
Iron Age Shoes gives the boot to Microsoft and SAP
Iron Age Shoes gives the boot to Microsoft and SAP: "Farris and his team evaluated deals from Microsoft Great Plains, their incumbent vendor, which they had been using for general ledger and accounts payable functionality, as well as offerings from German ERP giant SAP before choosing Oracle E-Business Suite.
The CIO said his company passed over Microsoft because that its offering would require that Iron Age place servers and tech support at every location -- a possibility that didn't bode well for the company's goal of centralized management.
'Great Plains just presented so many problems associated with the deployment,' Farris said. 'And to be perfectly honest, their pricing just wasn't as good as what we thought it should be.'
Iron Age ruled out SAP because of high cost and 'a lack of focus' of their applications, Farris said.
'[SAP] didn't necessarily have the pieces of functionality or core operational functionality that we had hoped to have and that would have made it worthwhile for us to partner for as much money as their implementation teams were really looking for,' Farris said.
Farris said that another problem he had with SAP ERP was how well it 'played' with software from third-party vendors and consultants.
'We used offshore resources, we used Canadian resources and we used U.S. resources from a number of different players, and they all played in the same sandbox very well, and that was not something that we were going to be able to have work for us with SAP,' he said.
Farris said Iron Age ultimately chose Oracle because it had a lower total cost and was easier to manage. The company now uses E-Business Suite for core operations, Oracle iStore for the firm's Web presence and Oracle Mobile Supply Chain technology"
The CIO said his company passed over Microsoft because that its offering would require that Iron Age place servers and tech support at every location -- a possibility that didn't bode well for the company's goal of centralized management.
'Great Plains just presented so many problems associated with the deployment,' Farris said. 'And to be perfectly honest, their pricing just wasn't as good as what we thought it should be.'
Iron Age ruled out SAP because of high cost and 'a lack of focus' of their applications, Farris said.
'[SAP] didn't necessarily have the pieces of functionality or core operational functionality that we had hoped to have and that would have made it worthwhile for us to partner for as much money as their implementation teams were really looking for,' Farris said.
Farris said that another problem he had with SAP ERP was how well it 'played' with software from third-party vendors and consultants.
'We used offshore resources, we used Canadian resources and we used U.S. resources from a number of different players, and they all played in the same sandbox very well, and that was not something that we were going to be able to have work for us with SAP,' he said.
Farris said Iron Age ultimately chose Oracle because it had a lower total cost and was easier to manage. The company now uses E-Business Suite for core operations, Oracle iStore for the firm's Web presence and Oracle Mobile Supply Chain technology"
