I have to disagree here strongly. You are just saying, that a company that became big enough, so it can afford SAP, should drop their way of doing business, drop the processes that made it big in the first place and go through a painful and expensive process where it will become just another SAP shop, with zero competitive advantage.
Telling that losing your uniqueness and being like “everyone else” will actually become your competitive advantage is something that only SAP can come up with.
If you already grew big, you won't grow bigger by adopting SAP. You can stagnate at best, as shown a million times in the real world. Companies that still want to grow just don't use SAP. Period.
> drop the processes that made it big in the first place
This is pretty much never the case, and more often than not the company is successful despite those process, not because of.
Many processes evolve on an ad-hoc and as-needed basis, with some tweaks here and there over time as the company grows and staff turns. You eventually reach a point when no one can remember how a process came to be, or why Sarah has to export four files from three web interfaces and copy/paste data across two Excel files to send to John over in accounting that was just trained last week on how to use this file to true up actuals.
There's only so many ways a company can track inventory, or manage purchase orders, or calculate product costs, or represent sales order and invoices. An ERP acknowledges that a vast majority of businesses operate with the same set of industry-specific operational primitives, and businesses have learned that it's both more time-and-cost effective to adapt your business to the expectations of the ERP than the other way around.
In the rare case you're doing something novel, you can still build your bespoke solution on top of those existing ERP primitives without having to re-invent how the numbers come together so your company can spit out the three financial statements.
Not the OP, but my feeling is that you use standardised processes when they are not your core. For example, if you produce a widget using various raw materials, is the way you pay your staff delivering any competitive advantage? Or the MRP process you use to re-order engineering spares? Probably not - standardise those. Implement unique processes where they differentiate you from your competition. Standardise everything else.
Sorry, but that's just not borne out by data: almost all of the Fortune 500 companies use SAP (something like 80-90%; probably the rest use Oracle, which isn't significantly less painful to move to).
A company I once worked at was taken private by a private equity firm. One of the first initiatives this firm kicks off upon closing an acquisition is moving the company to Oracle for ERP. It can take years and many millions of dollars (as it did in this case--the company was built around an in-house sales and order system), but it's part of their playbook. I have no idea if it's truly worth the cost, but that equity firm surely believes so.
That needs some nuances. There are some processes that are just well-known by research to be standardized - like supply-chain, regardless if JIT-style or forecasted stockkeeping.
SAP does not need to touch the "unique" detailed processes that makes a company great, nor it's culture. But if you e.g. manufacture a product, the design process can still be relatively unique to your company, but most often, the manufacturing processes should follow the high-level blueprint of manufacturing companies.
Is it the business processes that make a company successful, or is it the product, employees and business culture that make a company successful?
If its the former, than conforming to SAP is giving up what made you good. But if its the latter, then conforming to SAP is just making the basics more standard and easier to maintain.
Successful companies are rarely leading their industry because they have competitive advantages across their HR or Accounting or CRM or Inventory or manufacturing (etc etc) processes. Large company requirements are typically the same or very similar across industries for these standard business processes. It makes sense to standardise on your ERP for these. The typical problems come when companies think they are special and start to customise.
Standardise the mundane (with an ERP, with minimal customisation) business processes so your company can focus on innovating where they have true competitive advantage. This is the recipe for a successful ERP implementation.
Telling that losing your uniqueness and being like “everyone else” will actually become your competitive advantage is something that only SAP can come up with.
If you already grew big, you won't grow bigger by adopting SAP. You can stagnate at best, as shown a million times in the real world. Companies that still want to grow just don't use SAP. Period.