Here at Nextance, we’re constantly speaking with companies whose IT departments are making them look at the ERP’s contract management solutions, but the businesses can’t afford to wait two or more years for a quasi-viable 80% solution. Nextance, and other best of breed vendors, provides customers with that 100% contract management solution today, and will continue to innovate on contract-related technology. Hence, in two years, the ERP vendor will offer a comparative 60% (or less) solution.

Just like people are getting more and more information and entertainment from blogs targeted directly at them, companies continue to see the drawbacks of mass marketed ERP solutions, and are looking more and more to best of breed vendors who fill their exact need.

The battlefield is littered with the corpses of development teams at large consultancies and ERP vendors — teams that are often led by folks fresh out of an MBA program — who have declared a particular vertical to be “easy,” and have attempted to trot out a 60% solution. Hmmm, what ERP player competes with Kronos, 10 years later? [sound of flies buzzing]

What looks easy from the outside often turns into a series of nasty surprises once you’re on the inside. In my own experience, I recall deciding (while I was still wet behind the ears) that point-of-sale reports should “of course” be driven directly from a database management system, and that the existing POS vendors were crazy for not doing so themselves.

Once our code lived through one night of bitter reality at a busy restaurant, though, we realized that the multi-way joins required to produce server summary reports caused the database to spin for two or three minutes on each report, on the hardware of the day (100mhz 386’s). That’s totally unacceptable in the real time environment of a restaurant, where 20 servers and bartenders are standing in line swearing, waiting to cash out at the end of the night.

We mastered the problem domain eventually, but I learned an important lesson on how much development work it takes to produce a competitive vertical application. Bottom line: it ain’t easy, and it takes some very serious staying power and focus to build a good one. That’s something they didn’t teach me at MIT, where we waved magic wands in the classroom and solved big problems on the blackboard.

So do keep carrying the best-of-breed torch, Jason — but expect the usual criticism from the usual parties.