Hey there, this is Shamus McGillicuddy, news writer for SearchSMB.com. I’ll be a regular contributor to SMBlogger.

Last week I reported on research which suggested that SMBs go live with an ERP implementation much faster than large companies. Cindy Jutras, VP at Aberdeen Group, said SMBs use speed of implementation as a metric for success. She argued that this focus on speed leads many SMBs to stop short of getting the most out of their ERP system.

But an argument could be made that a slow, thorough implementation can be just as troublesome. For instance, this reader, an IT employee at a large multinational corporation, shared his thoughts on his company’s SAP project.

According to management, installing SAP has been one of the main number one priorities since around late 2002. We are due to go live with the first country in 2007. On current schedule, the last country will get the system around 2011 or 2012. The aim is to have a common platform in all countries of our operations

My one-liner to describe this is that installing SAP takes twice as long as it took to fight and win the Second World War. I believe that was quite a big project, and this time the Germans are on our side.

The annual fee alone for SAP (once installed!) will be several times what we currently pay for our old steam-driven accounting system… A lot of people on the SAP project at the beginning will have retired by the time it gets finished.

And new versions of SAP and other systems keep coming out. By 2010, Microsoft Dynamics may have a system which is faster, cheaper, and more flexible than SAP… So in IT projects, it is almost always a bad idea to even start a project which will take 5 years or more for payback. By then there will be something else available.

Perhaps there is a balance to be struck between speed and thoroughness. If you can find a vendor that can offer that balance, you’ll have struck gold. Good luck.