RE: European vs. US implementations (for Paul Connolly fromMikeEllis /ISI)

MAPICS may be a bit of an odd case in any overall analysis of European
vs American software. MAPICS was originally done to sell IBM hardware.
Given IBM's reluctance to enhance anything already in the market because
of a practice that favored new sales over keeping existing customers
happy. So...MAPICS got off to a very stagnant start with enhancement
requests being round filed. 

Finally when MAPICS got its freedom, strangely enough at the hands of a
MAPICS "enhancer" it was used as fuel for Prism and Protean, Marcam's
two main products.
Once again stagnation was the result. An attempt was made to re-write in
Java but that failed on a lack of maturity in Java and a conflict
between keeping existing function or changing enhancing it. 

But source availablity, Paragon and an active third party market served
to fill in quite a few gaps and keep it on life support. 

On the other hand, Europe never did get into the single source vendor,
account lock in that America found necessary, and with larger sets of
requirements due to language, taxation, currency and manufacturing
requirements the code was far more open and flexible. Interestingly,
most of the major packages seem to have European roots, SAP, BAAN, IFS,
etc. I guess it is a little bit now like American's chosing a BMW over a
Chevy Malibu, they both get you there but it feels better (and more pain
free) in a BMW. 

Interesting as well Marcam did succeed in creating a state of the art
product in Protean but without an install base or a conversion path it
failed to gain traction. Seems if you don't have installs in America you
cannot get installs. By gaining acceptance in Europe first the European
software houses came over with a built in client base and mature
products.

Protean does still live on in Japan being currently owned and supported
by NEC. It seems like the Japanese market is just the opposite of the
American one. It requires custom software with high functionality. 

Any other people care to contribute?

Regards

Konrad
-----Original Message-----
From: michael.ellis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:michael.ellis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 4:32 PM
To: mapics-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: European vs. US implementations (for Paul Connolly from
MikeEllis /ISI)


Paul,

I haven't done any scientific studies, but my experience with European 
implementations vs. US is exactly as you have said.  The US mentality
has 
been traditionally to adjust business processes to meet the standard 
design.  The European (more specifically German) attitude has been that 
the customer people know better than software people in all instances
and 
the software should conform.   I believe this derives from other social
& 
cultural norms in the two parts of the world.

Michael G. Ellis
Information Systems International, Inc.
A Global ERP Consulting Firm
815-398-1670 x23
 
Choose ISI consultants to ensure consistently top quality implementation

services at all levels of your organization.

"To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the 
greatest bearing on excellence of character. "
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics


date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 09:32:30 +0100 
from: paul.connolly@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
subject: Functionality and Support: USA Vs European Businesses

Hello

Following on from the many discussions on the functionality, support,
and robustness of MAPICS XA could I ask the following question:

In general, are European businesses more demanding in bending the
functionality of software to meet their business processes as opposed
(perhaps) to the American's willingness to bend their processes to meet 
the
vanilla software?

It appears to me from a lot of the responses of this group that there is
a significant correlation of favourable/ unfavourable opinions depending
on the USA/ European divide.

Cheers

Paul
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