dtfinch's Journal: The thriving ERP market

After years of reviewing crappy ERP system after ERP system, each selling for $20k to $100k for about 10 seats, I've come to the conclusion that this just might be a good market to get into. I've heard it's rather unrewarding, and comes with great responsibility, but after seeing all the crap that people try to pass off as ERP, and noticing that these companies are somehow not only still business but actually doing quite well, my confidence has never been higher. Some of these systems are even written in Microsoft Access. 2/3 of them are two-tier, where the clients work directly with data files. They just make a few sales per year per employee and they're set.

Small to medium sized businesses have widely varying "needs" (wants), so every ERP vendor has a chance to make some sales, no matter that their system isn't the best. Half of these systems are so crappy because they were built inhouse by one business with special "needs" and later marketed to other businesses with similar "needs". Given that I'm a programmer (plus everything else computer related) for a small/medium manufacturing businesses with special "needs" which finds every other ERP system to be woefully inadequate, that makes me the perfect candidate for creating a yet another new ERP system to fill yet another unsatisfied niche. Having seen so much of the competition, I ought to have a good idea of what not to do by now.

I hate this sort of work. CIS is rather boring and unrewarding compared to CS. If it doesn't make me wealthy, it'll make me crazy. Or it'll do both. Hopefully I'll still have time for fun.