Customisation vs. Vanilla Package

2010 % 2011%

Completely Customised 4.4 3

Heavily Customised 19.4 4

Mostly Vanilla 47.8 78

Vanilla 28.3 15

Table 4.4 above shows some trends regarding customisation of ERP. Fewer companies have the inclination to exercise a completely customised approach while imposing popularity has a tendency to stick as much as possible to Vanilla version. The majority of the companies in 2011 preferred to customise the ES while keeping the spirit of the vanilla version. By contrast, 2010 has fewer organisations interested in a mostly vanilla approach than year 2011 while keeping the pure vanilla version more than year 2011, 28 and 15 percent respectively. As emphasised by an airline executive (SAD): “If you follow it intelligently, I mean if that business process is aligned with your business objectives, with your strategic plans, with your line of business then it should be ok, but if this best business practices contradict your main line of business in some areas or it is affecting badly your strategic or it is dramatically affecting don’t go out of it Table ‎4.4 Customisation of ES VS Vanilla ERP Implementation (PCS, ERP

Report (2010, 2011)

188 know you try to bring in maybe 80 per cent of the industry standard practice and allow room for your unique cultural or things that set you apart from the rest of the industry. So I think overall, also you don’t want to be too different from everybody else because airline organisations exist at different levels whether it’s in IATA or ICAO or even when you take the Sabre community. Indeed, the most challenging part is adopting the business practices to the new practices that are supported by the new solutions. Now when you bring so many systems together, you can’t always get these systems to interact with each other. This impact how department interact with each other. We want not just implementation of new systems we want also business process redesign or re-engineering because you want a change in your process to adapt to the new systems. Obviously, these systems are community based systems. They are used by a large number of airlines. So they do conform to standard practices and to do it this way is much better that obviously to do it the other way where you let the business go on their own and then you build a custom solution for them.”

Figure ‎4.7 Business Process Improvement Focus during ERP Implementation (PCS ERP Report, 2010:7)

Figure 4.7 above shows that as few as 25 percent of the organisations have opted to completely or heavily customise the ES package. Nonetheless, most of the companies have the tendency to opt for some customisation and try their best to be close to the vanilla package. Roughly half of the companies categorise under mostly vanilla. An airline executive (SAA) affirmed: “We did a mix of both because the customisation in terms of our business process, and took Amadeus as best practice for the passenger management system and we look how it will fit into our business process and we did our own customisation for the local issues like implementing SADDAD payment systems and integrating it with our systems.” Almost a third (28.3 percent) of the firms opted to deploy ERP with no customisation. The low percentage of companies with heavy customisation is due to the fact that ES systems are inherently expensive and complicated when it comes to customisation, not just because this is very complex, but also tend to delay the overall deployment periods. Since no package can meet all the requirement of companies out of the box, customisation is becoming inevitable; what is more significant is, how much customisation is needed. Many companies understand the influence of customisation on the ES deployment as being attached to risk. The figure reported that the majority of companies tried to avoid such a risk at all cost. “Of the shelf products whether it is a business product or application will never fit your requirements as you define it now. But you might want to sacrifice 20 or 10 percent of your business process or objectives if you think that off the shelf practices are suitable for your core requirements” (airline executive) (SAB).

190 Figure ‎4.8 Business Process Improvement Focus during ERP Implementation (PCS ERP Report, 2011:11)

From the figure 4.8 above, 15 percent of companies have opted for a vanilla package as compared 2009 (28.3 percent) which indicates that more companies are choosing the customisation approach. Almost all (85 percent) the firms have chosen to customise the ES product with two thirds of them opting to customise between 0-25 percent. Although customisation has always been a prime reason for delaying projects and extending budgets, the pure vanilla version was clearly not the desired option for most of the companies participating in this survey. An ASP director (SPG) provides some insight with regards to the vanilla ES that it is the “disadvantage which I believe is not a major thing because the disadvantage into this is that you would have to put some time into tweaking or into change management activities that needs to be done on your organisation to fit the best practice.” Another executive (SAD) added, “So you will be faced with the dilemma of upgrade and integration, refresh, new versions, new releases it will be a nightmare. So you take that solution, you take also business process model behind it and try to match it with

your existing business model. The winner should always be the solution business process model that you have bought not your business process model. I think for the airline to get the benefit for the enterprise solution is to keep refuelling their business process, I mean if the business process is design for this year is not necessary this business process will be beneficial for the next three years.

Figure ‎4.9 Business Process Improvement Focus during ERP Implementation (PCS, ERP Report, 2012 :4)

Figure 4.9 above indicates that ERP predominantly (41 percent) influenced organisations’ business process, which indicates the strategy and expected

192 business process re-engineering accommodating the ES implementation. On the other hand, there a marginal figure for organisations that tended to customise their ERP package by changing the software to match their local business process. Those processes which provide a competitive advantage should be kept as they are, as changing them would jeopardise what most companies strive to achieve and would work against the strategic objective of the purpose of having ES in the first place.

One reason companies opt to customise is to reduce change resistance when adopting ES packages and to please the staff more. A downside of customisation might be including an unnecessary, inefficient business process which might need re-engineering. Another is customisation being different from the industry standard; however, customisation might be necessary if it fell within the core of business of the company and provided a competitive advantage over rivals. An airline executive (SAB) commented on the software package and core business process: “Is it going to give me the core module or I’m going to lose on the core side. If I will lose on the core side I will step back, if I am losing from the boundaries, a few functionalities I can work around then I would go for off the shelf.”