Erp software

ERP vendors may stack up differently, but their basic financial applications rarely do.

by-Scott Leibs, CFO Magazine

When Jackson Laboratory completes the implementation of its new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in April, you can be sure that CFO Lee Wilbur will be a happy man. The genetics research institution, in Bar Harbor, Maine, began the effort more than two years ago, and, along the way, the $97 million, 1,200-person lab has experienced both success and frustration. The stability of the software--in this case Oracle Corp.'s new, Webcentric 11i suite of products--posed an issue, as did the availability of a new order-management module that the laboratory decided was worth waiting for.

One aspect of the implementation, however, wasn't an issue at all, despite the fact that the company's CFO led the company's CFO led the ERP project. Wilbur and his colleagues wasted little time evaluating the capabilities of Oracle's financial software--the general ledger, accounts payable, and related functions that are typically described as the "core" of most ERP packages. "The financials were very similar among all the companies we considered," says Wilbur. "Oracle did offer a grants-accounting module, which no one else we looked at did, but that was the only difference we noticed."