LawsonGuru Blog

There was an interesting opinion piece recently in Information Week (see http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165702167). The gist of the editorial is that we are moving to a service economy, and as such, our ERP systems need to change as well. SAP and Oracle are rooted in a manufacturing mentality.

This, of course, piqued my interest, since I’ve been involved in services-oriented ERP (and accounting for those of you who remember before ERP was such a term) software. I probably know more about project accounting (and government contracting) than the average software consultant. And, I was in it way before even hearing the word Lawson.

Some of you know that Lawson made an attempt to break into this market (which they called Professional Services), which is largely dominated by Deltek. However, they weren’t able to make much of headway. I was involved with a number of these clients, and while the software meant their needs, it certainly left a lot to be desired–mostly because Lawson just didn’t understand or appreciate the intricacies (like over/under applied costs) of how government contractors need to do their accounting. This is where Deltek truly shines.