jhg,
Oh Rofl!! I forgot you were the liberal arts guy!!!
Well my short answer was more or less correct in reading Chuzz' post.
One more time, without acronmns:
For another company to implement the Dell model on the software side (which is only part of the story, true, but a tough part), that company would have to:
1) Install Enterprise Resource Planning sw (ERP) which manages demand (orders) against mfg schedules - MRP, etc and all that. The 4 main players here are Sap, Oracle ERP, Psft and Baan. It takes minimum 2 yrs to come up on one of these, and 10-40 million $$.
Alternatively you could look at your business (AS DELL DID), and determine that you really dont need complex mfg software since you plan to manage your business differently. THen, you still need mfg software, but you can choose a 2nd tier player (ManMan, etc). Dell has Chess (renamed to Glovia).
2) Then, you need to install the Supply Chain Management piece (SCM) which runs on top of Sap,Oracle,Psft,Baan - another million or so, + the integration time. If you have a major ERP then the integration is cheaper/faster so a year maybe. Or in the Dell case with a small custom pkg there will be lots of customization of the SCM software, so som eof what Dell saved in not going Sap was partially eaten with the I2 integration to Chess.
Minimum, to get all these things in you are looking at 3 years and 15 million, and thats if nothing goes wrong, with a simple biz model. If IBM wanted to do it, 40 MM is my guess for the whole thing (of course if they already have Sap, and they probably do, then its 1 1/2 yrs for the SCM piece only). Anyway a lot of work and money.
MH |
