Faced with slow growth and saturation in its core markets, SAP has increasingly focused on more ‘peripheral’ areas of its application set in recent years – not least amongst them eProcurement.

Putting aside arguments about whether an agile purchasing specialist makes a better eProcurement choice than a cumbersome behemoth (can you tell my leaning here?), the question of integration remains, in SAP’s eyes at least, the trump to all other considerations.

We still see dozens of prospects that have had the frighteners put on them by their ERP provider, telling them that implementing a purchase-to-pay, or even a sourcing solution that is not part of the ERP suite might seem attractive in the short term, but lack of inherent integration means you’ll pay for it in the long term.

But that’s simply not true anymore.

The advent of SOA and web services, in tandem with highly flexible enterprise service bus technology, means that organisations can have their cake and eat it – implementing fast, cost-effective and usable best of breed solutions without the historical spaghetti junction nightmare of integration.

Integration is important – more than that it’s vital to get right – but that’s not an argument for sticking with your ERP provider. It is an argument for selecting a specialist vendor that treats integration seriously and can genuinely demonstrate their capabilities in this area.