I am tempted to draw relation to the things happening around us in nature. In 1859, Charles Robert Darwin, a well known English naturalist in his book 'Origin of Species', highlighted two vital traits of evolution. All living things on earth today are the descendants - with modifications - of earlier species.

Second, he proposed a mechanism - natural selection - to explain how evolution takes place. As part of natural selection, all living things keep on adapting to the changing environment around them. The fittest survive and carry their traits to the next generation.

ERP solutions have also undergone a multiple metamorphosis over the last few decades. They have adapted to the changing customer requirements and evolved over a period of time. Along the journey, there have been a lot of players who couldn't survive the onslaught of their own competitive environment and have either been acquired or perished. Yes, Darwin's Survival of Fittest applies everywhere.

The explosion in networking and internet technologies has forced the businesses to change the way they work. Gone are the days, when you used to compete with the company from the same geographical region. You may be taken by surprise by someone from Guangzhou in China to even relatively unknown place like Timbuktu. The worse scenario would be that you may not be even aware of whom you are competing. Suddenly, winning is everything. Innovation is one single ingredient that would sail 'adaptive companies' think ahead of their competition and provide their customers with the best solution at the lowest costs.

Companies are moving fast in creating loyal customers. It takes atleast 5 times more energy and resources to acquire a new customer rather than maintaining the existing ones. Companies are fast making customers part of their own operations. Example - Mclaren Mercedes, a luxury car maker in Woking, Surrey, requires their vendors to provide sub assemblies for steering wheels, suspension systems, dashboard systems just in time to match their customer's requirements. The customers buy Mclaren for the brand value which is superset of quality and reliable cars, customizable finish and never ending value. Mclaren may invest in the best Information Systems but they need to ensure that their vendors, an important part of the total value chain use the right systems.

Outsourcing is the order of the day in any industry. Some years back, I had visited Coventry, a onetime manufacturing hub in the United Kingdom to visit a large tractor company. To my amazement, the huge site had only one functional building in the myriad of large number of sheds and other structures, their administrative office. The rest of the factory was more of a yard and in ruins with whole manufacturing having shifted to Poland and other low cost eastern European countries. Come to India and visit places like Bangalore, Gurgaon, Pune and Hyderabad and you can taste where they run your banks, credit cards, railway enquiries, energy bills management etc ( the list goes on endlessly). Businesses are fast becoming adaptive - and outsourcing is the new economy phenomenon.

An Adaptive ERP would be one which allows the customers to connect with the vendors. It should be open to talk to the customers systems thus enabling the 'real integration'.

An Adaptive ERP can be implemented fast. Generally SMB organizations can't afford to spend more than 3-5 months to implement any business application.

An Adaptive ERP should be Easy to Use. End user acceptance is key to success of any ERP project. Executives instinctively know that their employees are their most valuable asset. Indeed, in many industries - such as Financial Services and Real Estate-the employee population is the most critical asset and manageable cost. The nagging issue is how an ERP can create a more efficient work environment and unlock the value of these employees. Unfortunately, many well known ERP products are cumbersome and difficult to use by the employees and thus projects fall flat on the ground.

An Adaptive ERP should be flexible to change with the business requirements. In industries like Retail, for many developing countries like India is still <5 % organized. The industry is in nascent stage but the CAGR is exponential. An Adaptive ERP should help the retail player to constantly innovate and accommodate the changes in the ERP systems to enable their business. Imagine, I wish to launch a new promotion scheme for my customers but my system doesn't allow me to do it fast. I end up losing the key opportunity as my ERP system was slow to react and rigid to change.

An Adaptive ERP should present the lowest TCO ( Total Cost of Ownership). I was going through the total revenues of the one of the largest ERP player. More than two third of their revenue comes from existing customers in terms of services and maintenance. I am scared. Would the ERP vendor charge me more as I move further? Considering this from SMB's perspective, it is simply impossible to implement a large company ERP as the total costs would escalate over the time.

Considering the plethora of ERP players around, Microsoft Dynamics presents a better proposition in terms of user friendliness, ease of implementation and all this resulting in lower total cost of ownership.

Can anyone beat the user friendliness of Microsoft Office and if an ERP looks like Microsoft Office, one would have one of the smooth and successful implementations. SAP may be good looking in features but still scores low when it comes to SMB requirements - Ease of usage, quick implementation, Adaptability to changing requirements, and a lower Total cost of ownership.

Can an adaptive ERP provide me Competitive Advantage?