Those of you who read our October newletter, will remember that nFold was involved in conducting a comparison between Peoplesoft and Accpac for two companies merging into a single entity. One of them used Accpac as its ERP system, while the other used PeopleSoft. There were some interesting conclusions arising from the project:

• System Efficiency - Although user feedback from other companies indicated that Accpac was more efficient, internal user feedback led us to conclude that on balance Peoplesoft transactions could be processed more quickly with fewer people.
  
  
• Financial Implications - Initial cost estimates to meet the functional requirements were much higher for a Peoplesoft solution - far in excess of the project budget.
  
  
• Functional Requirements - However, the Peoplesoft solution was a much better match to the company requirements. Many more features were 'out of the box', while customisation or programming would be required for Accpac to meet the need. Still, Accpac was an 80% match to the requirements, which was considered 'good enough'. And there were no showstoppers in terms of critical business requirements that could not be met.
  
  
• Supplier Performance - Although the Peoplesoft suppliers were rated by internal users as quicker to solve problems, and the solution is delivered with 650 best practices, the fact that a Peoplesoft solution would take 6-9 months rather than 1-3 months to deploy, weighed against it in the final analysis.
  
  
• Technical Considerations - Accpac was not nearly as integrated a solution as Peoplesoft because different modules (e.g. CRM and Customer Service) are developed by different companies. Still, the latest version of Accpac was judged to be more stable and the level of complexity for upgrading to the next version was significantly lower.
  
  
• User Feedback - Internal user feedback weighed in favour of Peoplesoft, while feedback from users in other companies leaned more towards Accpac. So on balance, the solutions were considered to be equal in terms of user feedback.
  
  At first glance, the enormous cost premium and time consuming deployment of Peoplesoft tipped the scales in favour of AccPac. The COO likened the comparison to an Audi sedan versus a Toyota bakkie - one is a lot more comfortable, the other gets the job done. However, the company was able to finess the time, complexity and cost implications by reducing the scope of the project. So in the end, they chose to go the Peoplesoft route.
  
  I'm sure you will have seen that Peoplesoft has recently been taken over by Oracle. nFold's analysis predicted that this might occur. Fortunately, Oracle has promised customers it will continue to support and develop the Peoplesoft solution. So the risk turned out to be less dramatic than we feared. Well done Peoplesoft!