{"id":664,"date":"2012-06-07T19:05:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T19:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/?p=664"},"modified":"2022-07-14T22:21:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T22:21:46","slug":"single-or-multiple-instance-erp%e2%80%99s-for-global-shared-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/2012\/06\/single-or-multiple-instance-erp%e2%80%99s-for-global-shared-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Single or Multiple Instance ERP\u2019s for Global Shared Services?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Single instance ERPs lend themselves to greater standardization and control, but can often lead to the local country or regional 3rd party applications cropping up and IT departments supporting large numbers of interfaces to the ERP. Alternatively, multiple instance ERPs allow for certain deviations, but are more costly to maintain and overall governance and control of the instances can easily result in a situation where global efficiencies are diluted.<\/p>\n

In a recent PeercastTM<\/sup> in the Shared Services Leadership Research Area, members discussed the relative \u201cpros and cons\u201d of single versus multiple instance ERP\u2019s. \u00a0Members were polled as to the level of standardization of their current ERP systems within their company<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"highest<\/p>\n

The PeercastTM\u00a0 <\/sup>featured two member\u00a0 Shared Services<\/a><\/span><\/strong> organizations that have strategies to migrate to the optimal number of ERP instances. In both instances, the companies have made excellent progress migrating the vast majority of their processes to global standards enabled by a primary single instance ERP. However, both indicated that for certain geographies and\/or business lines, legacy or custom-designed processes and systems were chosen to deviate from the standard. These decisions are based on fact-based analysis that indicated the global standards would be either too restrictive of costly to modify for those locations or business segments.<\/p>\n

The collaboration among member companies agreed that the approach to finding the least number of instances leads to the greatest benefits and that the decision process for any exceptions should be stringent and made at the highest levels of the organization and not an individual region or business line decision.<\/p>\n

The benefits of a single instance ERP that were discussed include:<\/p>\n