The other way to look at it is that if you truly believe your strength is your product (the software you write), you might as well not risk in other areas where you could either make a right or a wrong decision, and just standardize on every other process so you're on a level playing field. This way you lose the chance of innovating on how to do payroll more efficiently, but you focus your innovation efforts on your product (your software).

The key is to figure out what to copy and what to innovate. This is usually captured by the idea of "core competency": figure out what your company's unique competency is, innovate in that area, and avoid trying to innovate in other areas in order to save time.

==Unless your company has thousands of employees and billions in revenue, Google/Microsoft/Apple processes are probably not for you.==

Then you probably don't need and shouldn't buy SAP.