Source: Software Advice Blog, http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/uncategorized/best-of-breed-or-integrated-suite-10-questions-to-consider-1050610/
The 10 questions suggested by the author are:
- Are your needs for the new application really that specialized, or can they be met by your ERP vendor’s (potentially) broader offering?
- Do you really need the systems integrated, or are you OK with two standalone systems?
- Does your ERP vendor offer (or come close enough to offering) what you need?
- Do you have the IT resources necessary to perform a complete integration?
- Are the near-term hurdles of implementing a suite or best-of-breed system justifiable for long-term business improvements, or are they prohibitive?
- How truly integrated is the integrated suite vendor’s offering?
- Is the ERP vendor’s solution close to a best-of-breed system?
- What is the long-term viability of the best-of-breed vendor?
- Will the ERP vendor give you such a significant price discount that it offsets the sacrifice in functionality?
- Does the new applications category (i.e. CRM) merit a different deployment model (i.e. SaaS) than your back-office ERP system (i.e. on-premise)?
Question: How do you deal with choosing between all-in-one versus best-of-breed? Answering this without regard specifically to software is perfectly fine.
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