P2P Nirvana is right around the corner!

As an end-user/manager of your P2P process, you’ve been told this many times … wait for the next version of our ERP System. Wait for the “new and improved” SaaS P2P System. Wait, Wait, Wait.

Why, Why, Why?

You feel a responsibility to you and your company to improve the P2P process, manage spend, and cut costs. So why wait?

IBM and later Microsoft made an “art form” out of convincing their users to wait. Now Ariba and SAP are taking a page out of their playbook by trying to “force” customers to upgrade to the latest release of their software after waiting for GA. Jason Busch blogged about this in the Spend Matters October 15th posting, “So you’ve evaluated SAP SRM and you’re not sold.”

Debbie Wilson from Gartner addressed this very subject on October 19th in her blog posting, “Answering Ariba’s 9r1 Upgrade Call.” Of course, there are several problems with waiting. First, it is difficult to increase spend under management when you know you’ll be changing to a new version of the software…the user interface will be different, end-users will have to be re-trained, etc.

Rather than upgrading to the new version, consider switching to another vendor with a proven platform, solid customer references, and a lower cost. Spend Matters (Jason Busch) and Gartner (Debbie Wilson) suggested this as a viable alternative.

If you’re still not sure, consider a subscription or term license where you can gain access to your data at the end of the term.

It may sound risky, but when compared to waiting for a new, unproven platform it can start to look like a very good alternative … and it can save you money!

Also, what’s to say the new version you’ve been waiting for will really address your issues. As Mac said to PC in the latest Apple TV commercial …“I’ve heard that before!”

As we like to say: “Progressive Improvement beats the hell out of Postponed Perfection.”

Tags: Ariba Buyer, Debbie Wilson, Jason Busch, SAP, Spend Matters

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Analyst, End-User, Increasing Top Line Revenue, Internal Controls, New User Adoption, Procure-to-Pay, Procurement, eProcurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.