When it comes to handling legacy environments, many big ERP vendors – Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and so on – will likely advise a rip and replace of aging software with modern, clean-core and cloud-based alternatives.
The reasoning makes sense in theory – companies can eliminate the technical debt of workarounds, patches, and time-consuming manual maintenance, simplify their stack management, and create the flexibility businesses need for changing market demands, new technology integration, and eventual business growth. It also helps plan ahead for the end-of-life deadlines for certain legacy systems, such as Oracle support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.2, projected to finish in 2035.
Sounds great right? And for some businesses, it’s the best solution. However, as EAP vendors such as Nextworld argue, this approach doesn’t always make sense for businesses looking for an affordable and smoothly implemented solution in the now. Speaking to ERP Today, Nextworld’s Vito Solimene, founder and chief software engineer and Lyle Ekdahl, member of the board of advisors, press that businesses know that taking the risk of a rip and replace isn’t the only option.
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An incremental or best-fit approach
For businesses where the existing system still meets most of their core operational needs or where making changes incrementally in a gradual or phased approach might be better suited, there are other options available.
Ekdahl explains: “If you were to approach one of these vendors, that’s what they would tell you to do – rip it all out, start with financials, let’s go through the whole process that we did 20 years ago and build it all back up again. We think that there is a better way to do that evolutionarily and attack point problems to get quicker ROI for less spend.”
As Solimene notes further, some new systems are not that much different than 30 years prior, bar a cloud-hosting benefit. He says: “You can do all that high-cost rip and replace and still end up with the same old ERP system – just regurgitating what you’ve gotten before.”
Otherwise, some businesses opt for a more composable ERP, with hybrid clouds and on-premise systems across diverse vendors, avoiding an “all-in” and upgrade necessity mindset. It’s becoming an increasingly popular approach – enabling businesses to pick and choose which operations they want to upgrade and start to develop a best-fit attitude to departmental software upgrades.
For Ekdahl, the trend is a positive move for many businesses, but he warns of ongoing “tectonic plate” concerns with slow-moving and potentially disruptive outcomes: “If you go best of breed, or more componentized, which is definitely the trend, you’re going to end up with gaps that exist between the tectonic plates of enterprise systems, between your customer-facing systems, or your CRM, CX, or supply chain, core financials and HCM systems. All those things at their edge, won’t quite go far enough.”
The Nextworld pair instead suggests that a no-code enterprise application platform (EAP) has an architecture that can avoid these problems – and has found that it presents a particular opportunity to JD Edwards customers.
Balancing the tech-tonic plates for JD Edwards users
Having not only been founded by (among others) Ed McVaney (the “Edward” in JD Edwards), Nextworld has also designed a dedicated connecter to the ERP vendor. The result, Nextworld says, is strong support for JD Edwards software allowing users to better integrate, build and extend using the EAP platform, without the extra investment of a rip and replace.
Nextworld’s offering is one of two parts – the no-code platform for the citizen developer and the suite of packaged applications, which the vendor claims will help users actually consolidate the number of best-of-breed systems in software stacks in a better approach to modernization – so instead of a bigger rip and replace task, organizations can recuperate company resources with a less mammoth EAP.
Ekdahl says: “This is where EAP sits alongside, and frankly even underneath to fill in many of those gaps for a more continuous automation – without having to rely on IT. We’re purpose-built in some sense to help them modernize, or extend, or customize as they see fit, and then integrate back into their JD Edwards system, or even replace and supplant their JD system altogether.”
“Most importantly, they can build those capabilities no-code with citizen developers that are understanding of the business process,” Ekdahl continues. “So it’s not like you’re relying on, like in the past, customization, or the build-out of these functionalities and extensions that required IT with a huge backlog.”
One joint Nextworld and Oracle customer in the automotive industry, a repair and maintenance services provider, is a prime example of this in action. For a bit of background, the automotive services firm has a network of 65,000 service providers, delivering 24/7 support across the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and managing 800,000 events per year with around $350m in revenue.
The firm is looking to grow to eight million events and to improve its invoice settlement process, but, with a custom differentiated invoice settlement, they couldn’t quite get there with their existing system. The cost and effort was too high, and a rip and replace for a new cloud system would also not fit the unique settlements calculation approach that the business needed.
With customizing the ERP not being a viable option, and the CRM also not having that functionality, they are now using Nextworld’s access to packaged apps to build a custom and no-code process and integrate that back into that same existing system.
With the newer offerings of the big ERP vendors perhaps not matching the cost and risk for many businesses’ peace of mind for an all-out rip and replace, hearing from the Nextworld team is a breath of fresh air and understanding. Slow-moving and disruptive is no longer an option for many and that’s where EAP vendors such as Nextworld are looking to plug the tech-tonic plates.
