#4 Avoid Customizations
According to a majority of vendors surveyed, many organizations approach an implementation with an attitude that their processes are unique, or that the system code base should be customized, in order to minimize the impact of change and to fit their requirements. Approximately 90% of all processes can be configured directly into an accounting application with minimal effort and a commitment to adopt best practices. Accounting applications come pre-built with years of best practice development built into business processes such as order-to-cash or purchase-to-pay or even inventory management. Costly and risky customizations seem to have a greater tendency to occur with on-premise applications. Conversely, hosted vendors give you a configuration layer that is not impacted by any upgrades. Customizing an on-premise application often involves costly consultants re-writing code that interferes with the natural ability for the software to upgrade Subsequent upgrades require the consultant (again at potentially significant cost) to re-apply the customization and then perform extensive upgrade tests. Last, using standard business processes will enable the organization to architect the application out-of-the-box for any future requirements like integrations, consolidations, multi-currency, and tax or language issues.
Echoes From the Valley 