Microsoft Touts Customer Win at Oracle ERP Shop

Published: March 26, 2008

by Alex Woodie

A Northwest supply chain company will save $1 million over the next five years as the result of replacing an Oracle E-Business Suite ERP system with Dynamics AX 4.0, Microsoft announced last week. The upgrade was spurred by a prohibitively expensive upgrade.

PACCESS is a 300-person company that provides packaging and supply chain services to companies all over the world, with a specialty in the Asian manufacturing region. The company got its start in 1995, and today operates a paper and packaging materials division and a supply chain services division that integrates companies' procurement, logistics, distribution, and fulfillment activities.

PACCESS has used Oracle's flagship EBS suite of applications for years, and went through several rounds of upgrades and customizations, according to Microsoft. But when it came time to add more users to the system, the company had had enough.

"We tried to add five users, but we would have had to pay Oracle $365,000 because of a license-model change," said Nina Palludan, vice president of IT for PACCESS. "The five-year total cost of ownership for Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 was more than $1 million less than Oracle's, even though we already owned the Oracle software. Actually rebuying the Oracle e-business suite would have cost less than upgrading our current licenses."

PACCESS chose the less expensive Microsoft ERP solution in the end, which it predicts will save it $200,000 a year for five years compared to the cost of the Oracle ERP suite. A more intuitive user interface, easier reporting, and close integration with Excel were also cited as reasons for choosing the Microsoft solution.