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Comment by erpNerdThrAway | Hacker News Reader

SF doesn’t do ERP level financials natively, but there is an industry of apps built on top of SF. Some try to turn SF into an ERP. Examples I’ve worked with in the last year:

-Rootstock -Accounting Seed -FinancialForce

That said, I design ERP integrations for a living. SF based ERPs are consistently the lowest quality and most limited ERPs we deal with. I would highly recommend that any finance professional seriously considering implementing a SF based ERP take the following steps:

-Burn a large pile of money -Tell 2-5 of your finance employees to waste 30% of their work hours for 3-6 months -Implement an non-SF based ERP

The end results will be identical.

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Hilarious, thanks for the chuckle.

I'd like to ride along on an ERP integration some day.

I've been a part of a scaling start-up and it just feels like the kludge of tools small teams buy would be better served by a more integrated system. So I'd like to see what a big implementation looks like and figure out what pieces might be usable for small teams.

Yeah, it’s a surprisingly interesting space. ERPs are basically as complex as CRUD apps get, and because they model businesses, you learn a lot about how companies work along the way.

Wish I could take people on a ride-along, but because of the financial/business data involved it’s just not possible.

Out of curiosity: which system would you recommend for "ERP grade" financials? Is it SAP?

It 100% depends on the business. The ERP market is vast, and there is at least 1 ERP for every industry. I even worked with a country club management ERP once.

That said, I’m a big believer in going with what is popular. You’ll get more features, better support, better docs, and a community to ask questions to. And most importantly, more software will integrate with it. This is crucial. The last thing you want is your finance team having to manually key data from your satellite systems into your ERP.

Never ever let someone sell you on a niche ERP.

Other than industry, the big deciding factor is how big you are. SAP targets the Enterprise market. These ERPs are absurdly complex systems, and you’d only want one if you are big enough to have dedicated ERP consultants/admins.

That said, for general small businesses I would recommend: -Quickbooks Online -Xero

When you outgrow those, you’ll have a better idea what you want. Oracle NetSuite and Sage Intacct are pretty common next steps for digital companies.

This is a big question though. I finish with this hard-earned wisdom: enterprise software is only as good as whoever is implementing and administrating it. A good VAR makes all the difference in the world.

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