Does Innovation Through Acquisition Work? – Forbes.com
Microsoft’s acquisition of Great Plains to link front-end applications with enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications is a case in point, Chaudhuri notes. “The idea behind the deal is to have seamless integration between the back-end ERP applications, like manufacturing planning, supply-chain management, HR management and financial accounting, and front-end Windows and Office applications. But since Great Plains’ relationship-based consulting approach, supporting processes and IT systems are very different from Microsoft’s infrastructure (which is geared toward selling packaged software), these differences are naturally taking time to be reconciled,”