LawsonGuru Blog
Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
Category Archives: ERP
Are You Recession-Proof?
The economy is on practically everyone’s mind these days. We know we’re in for a bumpy ride over the next several months, and perhaps even years. Everywhere we turn, organizations are “battening down the hatches”, learning to do more with less. One way to do that is to evaluate our tools as well as our approaches to some of the routine tasks that we perform.
Customization: Risk vs. Reward
One of the realities of ERP is that organizations often feel they need to customize to meet their requirements. Customization is a tough choice to make and there really is no good answer. In this article, we’ll examine some of the reasons for customization of your Lawson S3 Applications, why to avoid it, and how to mitigate the risks if you do customize.
Do You Agree With Harry?
Lawson’s CEO Harry Debes certainly isn’t afraid to speak his mind or express his feelings. But Harry’s latest remarks deriding Software as a Service (SaaS) might just put him in the doghouse:
LWSN Expands Support Options as SAP Narrows
Over the past year or so, Lawson has been expanding their support offerings. It used to be that you had just one option: “Maintenance and Support”.
LSWN: Your Full-Service Provider
An interesting comment in the recent FY08 earnings conference call, made by CEO Harry Debes:
“I think some of our competitors in the case of Microsoft delivers no services, in the case of SAP and Oracle deliver a lot less services. It’s a strategy of ours to in fact be intimately involved with our customer not just to sell them software, we don’t think of ourselves as a software publisher. We think of ourselves as a solutions company and that involves services.”
LWSN: Watch Your Back!
For several years now, I’ve been telling Lawson (and anyone else who’s been listening…) that Microsoft–not SAP and not Oracle–is the competitor that Lawson needs to watch out for:
SAP’s SaaS Scaleback
According to this recent article (http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207403609), it seems that SAP’s ambitious plan for offering software-as-a-service (SaaS) to the mid-market was just a wee bit too ambitious:
Lawson: "The 6% Solution"
An interesting article in CIO Magazine (http://www.cio.com/article/177300/Why_ERP_Systems_Are_More_Important_Than_Ever).
“More than 85 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their ERP systems were essential to the core of their businesses, and that they ‘could not live without them.'”
But what jumped out at me were the numbers related to ERP market share. Besides the obvious fact that Oracle’s acquisition streak has bought it a huge market share, I’m still surprised that, according to this article, Lawson only has 6% of the market:
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