Single Source or Best of Breed - The Debate Continues
Olin Thompson - September 1, 2003

The Situation

The ERP base is up and running and now the needs of the business demand the addition of functionality beyond that base. The additional functionality may be supply chain management (SCM), business intelligence (BI) New Product Development (NPD), or any of a long list of acronyms. Perhaps your ERP vendor will not have the extension or its functionality will be clearly inappropriate for your needs and you will turn to another vendor for the functionality, a 'Best-of breed' vendor. But in many cases, the ERP vendor will have applications that potentially fill your need and you can get everything from the 'Single Source' vendor. In either situation, is it better to limit yourself to the products from a single vendor or pick from other vendors who appear to better fit your needs? Do you go 'Single Source' or 'Best of Breed'?..