I work at a fortune 100 company; my only ERP interaction is occasionally entering an equipment purchase order via an Oracle system. It sucks, so you're preaching to the choir.
Nevertheless, I'd still have to ask the following:
1) Your beliefs are easy to agree with, but how do you get your first 10 customers to believe that your solution upholds these beliefs?
2) How do you sell the idea of 'writing your own' to a business person who doesn't want to become the head-contractor for a software team?
3) Keeping in mind my white-hot ignorance about this particular vein of software, I'd want to know if the problem is really with the software? Or is it a problem with understanding the process and the implications of implementing it a certain way (ie, can processes interact? do we know if they will at specification time?)
4) How smart does the tiger team need to be? An ideal system should be reasonably easy to implement by average programmers.
5) How do you sell developers on learning your platform? A customer might be concerned that not enough developers know your ERP well enough to implement future extensions.
6) How do you sell customers? You're competing against the well-oiled sales machines of your larger competitors, and all but the smallest businesses may not mind spending $1M to ensure that their all-important business processes are implemented with a well-known ERP (poorly implemented or otherwise) that they can trust their business to....
I guess one way to counter this may be to make the ERP free (open source), and have a team of core developers/contributors who could then charge $ for implementation.
Don't mistake my concerns for a lack of enthusiasm. This is a field ripe for improvement, and you seem to have the ideal background for it.
3. My experience: 95% of the time the problem is with the software. They will willingly teach you their processes if you know how to ask and are patient enough to listen.
4. Very smart. That is one of my biggest challenges right now. My compliments on a great question.
5. Success breeds following. I don't want customers that are worried about the wrong things. There are plenty out there who aren't.
6. Every way you can. They are everywhere. I don't worry about "competing with well oiled sales machines", I relish the challenge. In the first hour, while they're still pontificating over their 4 color brochures, I can have a prototype up and running that addresses their biggest challenge. They should be worrying about me.
Great questions. Spot on. I never signed up for easy.
My experience over and over and over is: when you find out what's needed and deliver "something" very quickly that addresses it, you get their attention. Right now, I'm salivating just thinking about it.
It sounds like most of what you've asked can answered rather simply: Have a decent sales crew.
1) Getting your first 10 customers to believe in your product is the difficult one. But, if you can poach a VP of sales from an ERP company and have him bring his Rolodex, you should be okay. How do you poach a great VP of sales? With the right incentives. And for sales people, that incentive is lots of $$$. If you offer a sales person a generous base salary plus 10 percent of a million dollar software package. They'll be knocking your door down.
2) This is an objection that a sales person lives to answer.
3) From a sales perspective, It's the software, and our solution dramatically reduces the cost and that pain.
4) From a sales perspective, your new ERP can be built by a group of semi-literate apes and a 486.
5) Developer sales. Google for Balmer Monkey Boy Video, you'll see what I mean. It's all sales.
6) Again, sales. You don't compete on price, however. BigCo CIO's want to spend a couple million dollars on a new software package that runs the entire company. And, if you spend a couple million, dropping the odd million to fine tune the software is icing on the cake. "Last quarter we delivered a great software package to run WidgetCo. This quarter we're going to customize it special for us." quoth the CIO.
It's all sales, my comatose_kid friend. All sales.
Nevertheless, I'd still have to ask the following:
1) Your beliefs are easy to agree with, but how do you get your first 10 customers to believe that your solution upholds these beliefs?
2) How do you sell the idea of 'writing your own' to a business person who doesn't want to become the head-contractor for a software team?
3) Keeping in mind my white-hot ignorance about this particular vein of software, I'd want to know if the problem is really with the software? Or is it a problem with understanding the process and the implications of implementing it a certain way (ie, can processes interact? do we know if they will at specification time?)
4) How smart does the tiger team need to be? An ideal system should be reasonably easy to implement by average programmers.
5) How do you sell developers on learning your platform? A customer might be concerned that not enough developers know your ERP well enough to implement future extensions.
6) How do you sell customers? You're competing against the well-oiled sales machines of your larger competitors, and all but the smallest businesses may not mind spending $1M to ensure that their all-important business processes are implemented with a well-known ERP (poorly implemented or otherwise) that they can trust their business to....
I guess one way to counter this may be to make the ERP free (open source), and have a team of core developers/contributors who could then charge $ for implementation.
Don't mistake my concerns for a lack of enthusiasm. This is a field ripe for improvement, and you seem to have the ideal background for it.