Moreschi: Jones Corporation, our parent company, is a perfect case study of what happens when a company highly modifies the existing system. Because headquarters across the street started off with the same software that Rev-A-Shelf is running. But they kept modifying the system, rather than finding work-arounds or changes in processes. They're still on Epicor 7.0. They're investigating upgrading, but it's going to be very expensive because they're going to have to bring in a team of consultants and programmers to analyze where they're at, what it's going to take to upgrade to 7.35, and then bring forward all those mods or rewrite the mods to meet the current needs.

Rodgers: For them to upgrade like us, they would have to redo the entire way that they do their business.

BPM: So you've seen customization substantially increase the cost of software upgrades?

Rodgers: Yes. It becomes very cost-prohibitive when you have those mods built into the system.

BPM: And that takes a lot of internal resources too, I would think.

Rodgers: Yes, it does.

BPM: What other factors have you found to affect the speed, cost, and hassle of financial-system implementation projects?

Moreschi: The big factors in implementation are: Number one, do they have a legacy system? Number two, what is that system? Is it old and mainframe-based? Is it SQL-based? Is it an Oracle-based system? Number three, how easy is it to access that system, identify the data that you need to uplift into your new ERP package, and then bring that up?

BPM: How do you prepare for that before making the software purchase?

Moreschi: It goes back to whether you did your research and exercised due diligence when you were evaluating the software. I've been to client sites where they didn't like the way the product functioned, and the first question out of my mouth was, "Well, what company did you visit when you did a site visit when you were trying to decide whether to purchase this software?" And they said, "None." At that point, it's their own fault.

The best advice I can give anybody shopping for software? One, make site visits. Two, tell them to set up a test system in their office and work with it.

BPM: Work with it like they would use it?

Moreschi: Go in there and hack at it, look and see what screens are available, look at the reports that it generates. Because if a company is all about reports but doesn't have the skill set to create their own or modify what's in that system, they won't be happy. They'll have to pay a consultant to come in.

You want to load a demo database to work with for a month or two. A lot of times, somebody -- the chairman of the board or the president of the company -- says, "Yeah, this is great software." The decision is made, "Let's implement it," even though they've never seen it in action. You may be in the liquor industry, and you may buy a product that's geared toward the liquor industry and does all the case vs. six-pack vs. individual, that does all that inventory for you. But if it doesn't do it exactly the way you want it to happen, then you're going to have to either change your business process or change the software.