Why a generic ERP fits about sixty percent
ERP implementations don't usually fail on features. They fail on the forty percent of your operation that the software was never shaped to hold.
Every generic ERP encodes an opinion about how a business should run. That opinion was formed by averaging thousands of businesses, which means it fits the average of your industry and not you. The first sixty percent maps cleanly. The rest becomes configuration, then customisation, then a consultant retainer.
The compromise is where your margin lives
The awkward part is that the forty percent almost always contains your actual advantage — the unusual sequence, the exception your best customers rely on, the shortcut your team invented years ago. Being asked to standardise that away in the name of the implementation is being asked to become more average.
The honest test: list the five operational steps a competitor couldn’t copy this quarter. If the ERP requires you to change three of them, you are not buying software. You are buying a different business.