MS Dynamics blasted

Dennis Howlett at AccManPro has really blasted the MS Dynamics strategy – Three men in a boat – quote:

“In my opinion M$ business apps strategy in the UK is crap and effectively wrecked its market position. I don’t believe M$ can be considered a trusted *UK* business apps provider.
In short, they’ve taken the market ‘best’ app Navision – with its highly effective but proprietary C/Side technology, Axapta, the very low selling, Oracle DB preferred but .NET compliant app and Great Plains, the M$ smoke and mirrors app par excellence (for the UK), with no real understanding of ‘business.’ And effectively nuked the lot by developing to .NET but with GP style functionality.”

So does MS have a future in the ERP industry, or might they lose the plot and sell it off, as my Syspro colleague once said.

Gartner’s “IT doesn’t matter”

As sales is a big part of my life, I read a newsletter from Selling Power, and in a recent newsletter on software sales there is an article referring to Gartner reports which warn of a backlash against IT (information technology) by business executives, quote:

“The first report determined that 80 percent of what companies spend on IT doesn’t directly contribute to business growth or enhance competitive advantage, and is therefore ‘expendable.’ The second report pointed out that IT is seen as a waster of electrical power – a perception that would have been impossible in the heyday of the dot-com years.”

This sounds like another twist on Nick Carr’s “IT doesn’t matter”. But of course Gartner adds some suggestions how software sales people can try and counter-act this attitude.

I think that many large companies probably do spend far too much on IT, but I know from personal and repeated experience that small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) look at IT investment in a far more serious way, in terms of overall value and the return expected. They can take a long time, but when they decide to invest in an ERP system, it is because they really see the need for it and can point to real problems due to not having an integrated system.

Maybe it’s time for the analysts to start looking at how SMBs invest in IT.