Thursday, June 13, 2013

London log (3): ERP

I have known for some time that there is a British company which implements Priority, our ERP system. I thought it a good idea to take the opportunity of being in Britain to meet with this company, so a few months ago I obtained a contact number and set up a meeting with the MD. One of the hypotheses which I want to check is whether the Israeli pragmatic personality causes more EUC (end user computing) than the stolid British personality.

During my two hour plus discussion I discovered that Israel in general is more technologically advanced than Britain: there are still plenty of companies in Britain that are managed by spreadsheets! So it might well be that there is more EUC in Britain than Israel: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In other words, it doesn't matter too much where the company is situated - business is business everywhere. It seems that each company's position in the ERP life cycle will be more important that the country.

One interesting point (or dimension) that I had not considered is companies with multiple business units: my company has three different business units, and the amount of EUC differs from unit to unit. A one unit company is likely to be more streamlined and thus would have less EUC.

The meeting took place in a small town called Eastleigh, near Southampton. I had a few problems finding the correct train, and the journey there was delayed slightly - at one place, the train completely stopped, and over the loudspeaker came an announcement that we were waiting for a steam train to take on water before we could continue. This seemed like the excuse to end excuses - but later on, we did pass the steam train.

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