Food for Thought: Is There a Correlation with Good To Great Companies and the Primary ERP System of Record?

September 14, 2008

From time to time, this question comes up as to what ERP systems are used in the 12 companies listed in Jim Collins, "Good to Great" book. Here's the "official" system of record as gleaned from public sources including press releases, SEC filings, and media quotes. If you work for any of these companies, please let me know if I've got any of these wrong as things may have changed...
* Abbott Laboratories - SAP - Primary. BPCS (Infor) and JD Edwards (Oracle) run at the plant level
* Circuit City - PeopleSoft (Oracle) - Primary. Retek (Oracle) at the retail level.
* Fannie Mae - Custom ERP systems
* Gillette - Oracle (At the time of the book), P&G acquired Gillette and runs SAP
* Kimberly-Clark - SAP - Primary
* Kroger - Custom ERP systems. Retek (Oracle) at the retail level.
* Nucor - Custom ERP systems. IFS and Microsoft Great Plains at some plants
* Philip Morris - SAP - Primary
* Pitney Bowes - Oracle - Primary
* Walgreens - Custom ERP systems
* Wells Fargo - PeopleSoft (Oracle) - Primary
The bottom line.
The final score here is 4 for Custom ERP systems, 4 for SAP, 2 for Oracle, and 2 for PeopleSoft. With such a small sample size and Oracle buying up PeopleSoft, it looks like a 3-way tie for SAP, Oracle, and a custom ERP system. If there's any lesson learned here, technology serves a role as an accelerator and not a change agent. One might want to place bigger bets on people, especially Level 5 leaders, strong management, and self-discipline.
Your turn.
As far as one can tell, there rarely is a correlation with the ERP system and how well a company does, but I'll let you be the judge. Do you think the ERP System of record makes a difference in how a company runs? Share your thoughts here or send me a private email at rwang0@gmail.com.
(The personal contents in this blog do not reflect the opinions, ideas, thoughts, points of view, and any other potential attribution of my current, past, or future employers.)
Copyrighted 2008 by R Wang. All rights reserved

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