Comment by cbsmith

On "retooling SAP": SAP deliver their systems with all source code and dev platform included, and that may help convince some customers to go for SAP.

However, those that embark on deviating from the well-trodden path are going to be in trouble soon: after every update, potential changes made need to be re-done or edited or at least tested. So as the parent suggests it's really better to adjust the business process if you can.

There's a ton of variety out there in the real world such that you'll always find a few businesses that match almost any scenario you can imagine. So, yes, for some business doing a process a certain way is a competitive differentiator or advantage ... or even a necessity for their particular industry. For these businesses banging the SAP square peg into their special BP round hole is worth attempting. Even better might be just building their own custom round peg. I'm suggesting that many (not all) businesses are doing a BP a certain way for no compelling reason whatsoever other than that's the way they (almost randomly) picked to do it decades ago and could easily change to a standard practice without loss of competitiveness (maybe even gain by focusing on what does).

> There's a bit of selection bias going on there though. The reality is that SAP and similar products are designed for a business that works a certain way

ERP products are designed following "standard" or "best" practices/processes. It's common to see companies first contract a consulting company to "re-design" their processes before they then try to implement an ERP system.