
Ask HN: Hacking in to the ERP market? - cookerware
I see a lot of bloatware, and looking at the flurry of tables and endless dropdown menus, I wonder how people are able to get proficient at it.<p>Is there a way to do an innovative distruption in this space currently dominated by the big boys like Oracle, SAP, Sage?<p>Is there safety in complexity of an enterprise software, and thus higher cost? Is simplifying and making things intuitive a threat in this space?<p>When I see the screenshots and demos, my brain is screaming, this is just a bunch of databases hooked up together and form inputs, and I&#x27;m anxious to throw in any punch I can in here.<p>What I&#x27;m currently doing is talking with business owners directly, but it&#x27;s a hard sell because they are opting for off-shelf solutions.
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kmnc
Here is the real secret: Become a domain expert.

You aren't going to disrupt SAP by building a better data organizer/dashboard.
But if you truly understand the complexities of the domain processes you can
build a product that has real competitive advantages that you can directly tie
to actual ROI.

Secret number two: Look at smaller and more international markets.

Maybe you can't disrupt the help desk industry in the US but maybe you could
in Brazil or India. The enterprise software market is starting to get more
interest but in the next 20 years it will quite literally run the world. The
biggest opportunities won't come from disrupting incumbents, instead they will
come from empowering smaller markets to compete at a global scale.

Secret three: Become the connector not the producer.

Does Zapier want to be the next big enterprise software player? Probably. Does
easypost want to eventually create APIs for every logistics process? They
better be. Embrace the APIzation of everything and look for places were all
that's needed is some glue and oil instead of trying to rebuild the entire
machine.

~~~
Jugurtha
Great insights. On your first point: That allows you to see blind-spots of
people looking to big chunks miss. The little frustrations of the many (as
opposed to maybe, the big frustrations of the few).

Which leads to the second point:

I live in a country that's way, way behind when it comes to using technology.
The products are here, the infrastructure is here, but the services aren't.

It's a country where you can sell a WINDEV (:D) Windows app to a store owner
to print his invoices the way _he_ wants it and chage him $500. You'd only
have to modify the logo and tweak it to sell it to others. (Most don't even
have a logo).

It's a place where you could do small hotels an app for reception (check-in,
check-out) for 2 grand and it would take less than two weeks.

I've read a piece by Paul Graham about finding startup ideas.. It said
something like "Live in the future, build what's missing"..

Well, if you're living in the U.S leading the tech, you already are living in
the future. Jump in the Time Machine and go back in time: Go somewhere else in
the world. Build what's missing.

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retroafroman
I think one of your best options to to target smaller, specific problems, and
sell and 'off the shelf' (as much as possible) solution to small businesses
that aren't big enough clients for the giant gorillas of the current space.

As for what type of problems, I think you need to subdivide what the large ERP
systems do, and make niche products. For example, a company I worked for in
college was a small manufacturer and were trying and failing to keep track of
raw material inventory via Quickbooks. On one hand, the inventory needs to be
quantified in a dollar amount in quickbooks, but more importantly, they need
to be able to use real inventory management functions. Ideally, they would
(and probably could've) bought some package just for tracking inventory in and
out, but also had an ODBC connection for Quickbooks to see how much the
current inventory is worth.

Warehouse Management Systems are similar. Lots of providers at varying levels
of cost and complexity, but I haven't seen to many that I can jump into an app
store and buy. Of course, the real complexity is that every business has
wildly different needs, and even two businesses in the same space will manage
processes completely differently. Mods and customization tends to be a big
deal. Also, consultants are constantly fighting to be the middleman in between
the software providers and the end customers.

These are just a couple reasons I think it can be tough to break into the
markets that Oracle, SAP, etc are in.

Also, I think there's a good reason that there are tons of tables and menus in
enterprise software. There is a ton of structured data there, so it ends up
being the easiest way to show it. Simplifying features and interfaces is a
tough sell, because as soon as you think you have things down to a minimum set
of 'what really needs to be there', your customer will say, "oh, no. We REALLY
need to be able to do x,y,z". Okay, so those make the cut, too. Then the next
customer says, "We have a lot of exceptions to the standard process," and next
thing you know there are a million menus and options.

