Martin Siebold certainly felt overmatched. He's CEO of Wetzel GmbH, asmall but solidly profitable manufacturer of printing and embossingrollers. The 500-person, $50 million business is tucked inGrenzach-Wyhlen, Germany, near the Swiss border.

Several years ago, Siebold led a hands-on evaluation of enterpriseresource planning software that produced a decision matrix of options.The matrix showed that SAPSAP - the dominant ERP application - was too muchsoftware for his small company; other alternatives fit his needsbetter. Still, Siebold did something experts say is far more commonthan one might expect. He just went for it and chose SAPanyway. Alles zu SAP auf CIO.de

As it turns out, the cost to scale down SAP has proved higher thanexpected. Siebold also fesses up to owning pieces of SAP's softwarethat he simply has no use for.

Today Siebold attributes his choice to the vendors' ability to makehim see things their way. "In the end, you're very much in the handsof those guys," he says. "With all their training and experience withso many clients, they have a big, big advantage, knowing you'reprobably new at this."