Consumer products maker Dial is ditching a $20 million Oracle accounting system and replacing it with competing software from SAP. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company announced its SAP deal and a related $110 million information technology outsourcing agreement with Electronic Data Systems on Wednesday.
It's somewhat rare for big companies to toss out multimillion-dollar business systems. And the situation at Dial, the manufacturer of Dial soap, was still more unusual, because the company went on the selling block in the middle of its Oracle applications installation, said Jack Tierney, Dial's corporate controller. Dial did not end up being sold. When the company recently revisited the project, it concluded that SAP was a better fit, with more features tailored to consumer products manufacturing, he said. Its $35 million SAP deal includes software for manufacturing, accounting and managing supplies and customer information, Dial said.