The software case

When a company chooses a financial information system, one useful distinction, or dimension, is between "general purpose" systems and "industry-specific" or "vertical" systems. Another is between integrated systems (often marketed as "ERP") and so called "best-of-breed" systems. Please read the following short paper:

• Light, Ben, Christopher P. Holland, and Karl Wills (2001): ERP and Best of Breed: A Comparative Analysis. Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3.

For the link to the paper to work you need to be on the Hanken local area network, which you will be if you are using the Pafis server, or a machine in a Hanken computer lab. If you are accessing the paper from outside the Hanken network, you can try looking for it through the proxy interface to the ScienceDirect fulltext database. Go to the homepage of the Hanken library, look for fulltext databases, and click on ScienceDirect. You will be asked for your Hanken (not Pafis!) user ID and password, after which you can access the database, search for, and retrieve the paper. In case of trouble please ask Ogan.

In effect, this paper sets out the case for not going with an integrated ERP system, but instead choosing to piece together a solution from multiple vendors. Kindly consider the following questions:

• What are, in general, the pros and cons of integrated versus best-of-breed solutions?
• What are the factors which will make either one a better approach for a particular company?
• How do these factors vary across industries?
• Consequently, what would be good examples of industries where either integrated or best-of-breed solutions are dominant?

We will discuss these questions at the beginning of the lecture next week.

If you wish to be eligible for up to one (1) bonus point for the case, you need to write a preliminary analysis of the paper, post it on your Pafis homepage, and e-mail a link to your submission to afiscases@pafis.shh.fi before 09:00, Monday, September 27th. The case will be discussed in class at 12:30 on that same date.

Regarding scale and scope, the equivalent of 1-2 pages is quite enough, and even less may do. You need not aim for extremely polished and well-rounded prose, although it is nice if you do. But in effect, comments in the form of less structured bullet points, for instance, are quite all right. I would appreciate it if you'd remember to write your name on/in the submission, so that when I print it out it shows on the paper! The grading will, basically and almost always, be done on the following scale:

• No submission or clearly below-the-bar submission, i.e., mechanically copied phrases or suchlike - 0 points.
• Fair attempt, but totally misses the point or contributes nothing to the discussion, or some other major problem - 0,5 points.
• Adequate analysis - 1 point.

The written case analyses are done individually, that is, in groups of one (1). Note that in order to get points for a submission, you should also show up for, and actively participate in, the discussion in class - and that that, incidentally, is expected even though you haven't submitted anything in writing!

Note, also, that copying (copy-pasting or otherwise) from the original paper, or from somewhere else, is strictly prohibited and will have consequenses as outlined on the main course page. If and when you submit something you are supposed to write it yourself!