The value of an ERP system lies in the promises of better information, consistent systems, and reduced operational costs. With an ERP system, the ability to share data across applications and among different business units translated into more clearly defined business processes. The promise and the value depended on consultants who defined the current state of the business and who had a crystal ball made up of their vast experience to anticipate the future state. Companies counted on their ERP systems to accommodate growth and business changes. View the original Blog post: http://www.eprentise.com/blog/the-changing-enterprise/growing-complexity-limits-business-value/ Website: www.eprentise.com Twitter: @eprentise Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Eprentise/posts Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eprentise Ensure your data is Complete, Consistent, and Correct by using eprentise software to transform your Oracle® E-Business Suite.

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Growing Complexity
Limits Business Value
an eprentise white paper

2. Growing Complexity Limits Business Value
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© 2014 eprentise, LLC. All rights reserved.
eprentise® is a registered trademark of eprentise, LLC.
FlexField Express and FlexField are registered trademarks of Sage Implementations, LLC.
Oracle, Oracle Applications, and E-Business Suite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation.
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Author: Helene Abrams
Published: April 19, 2009
www.eprentise.com

3. Growing Complexity Limits Business Value
Copyright © 2014 eprentise, LLC. All rights reserved. www.eprentise.com | Page 3
The value of an ERP system lies in the promises of better information, consistent systems, and reduced
operational costs. With an ERP system, the ability to share data across applications and among different
business units translated into more clearly defined business processes. The promise and the value
depended on consultants who defined the current state of the business and who had a crystal ball made
up of their vast experience to anticipate the future state. Companies counted on their ERP systems to
accommodate growth and business changes.
Alas, those crystal balls seem to be a bit cloudy, and not even the best consultants could predict the
substantial changes that a company undergoes over the life span of an ERP system.
As companies approach 5, 10, and even 20 years running the same systems (albeit with numerous
upgrades and additional functionality), they are deriving less value from the system that was originally
implemented. The number of spreadsheets has multiplied, many are considering a re-implementation,
and there are hundreds, if not thousands of interfaces to systems that perform similar functions,
consolidate the data, or translate it so that it is useful to the ever-changing business requirements. The
promise of reduced operating costs and consistent systems has resulted in a very high cost of ownership
and a loss of business value.
The character of ERP systems also changed from supporting a business’ requirements to supporting
regulatory and control compliance. Of course, as those requirements changed, there was a need to invest
more capital and add more resources to support the ERP systems.
Further exacerbating the problem of a changing business is the growing complexity of the ERP systems.
As the following chart illustrates, complexity of Oracle® E-Business Suite has escalated with each new
version release, resulting in a system that is extremely difficult to maintain. For example, Oracle E-Business
Suite R12.0.6 contains over 2.6 million columns (about a 25% increase over the number of columns in
R11.5.10.2), each of which could be related to any other, or could be part of a check constraint, or part of
a unique or primary key. There are about 36% more constraints in R12.06 than in R11.5.10.2. Even
relatively “simple” changes such as finding the impact of a chart of accounts change now affects several
hundred more columns in R12.06. Thus, the complexity of changing a chart of accounts went up by more
than a third between releases.

4. Growing Complexity Limits Business Value
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Obviously, the larger the ERP footprint, and the more complex those systems are, the greater the capital
requirements for maintaining and changing them. The economics and the corresponding value of the ERP
system has changed. To compensate for the higher costs, ERP systems must be able to be extensible and
adaptable to changing requirements over a longer life span. ERPs must provide data consistency and
process integrity in addition to system consistency across the enterprise, As Gartner states, ERP systems
must support the “consistent and seamless capture, persistence, transformation and delivery of
information throughout the enterprise. To create this infrastructure, enterprises must align their metadata,
standards, information formats and technologies for persisting, accessing and delivering data. The
demand for tools and approaches that manage data more effectively will grow.”
Transformation software that enables ERP systems to change rapidly can change the value of the ERP
spend. Along with the need to manage the complexity of the business and the complexity of the ERP
systems, the need to cut costs and realign IT strategies is driving successful companies to invest in
changing their existing ERP resources.
Curious?
For more information, please call eprentise at 1.888.943.5363 or visit www.eprentise.com.
About eprentise
eprentise provides transformation software products that allow growing companies to make their Oracle® E-Business
Suite (EBS) systems agile enough to support changing business requirements, avoid a reimplementation and lower the
total cost of ownership of enterprise resource planning (ERP). While enabling real-time access to complete, consistent
and correct data across the enterprise, eprentise software is able to consolidate multiple production instances, change
existing configurations such as charts of accounts and calendars, and merge, split or move sets of books, operating
units, legal entities, business groups and inventory organizations.