The "Lion" Wants to Roar: Why You (and Your Delphi) Could Be the Next Unicorn

I received an email that made me reflect on the current state of our market. It came from an experienced developer, with decades on the road, who vented about seeing the software he cared for for years being replaced by a “Monster ERP” from a large corporation — one of those contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

His frustration? The new system is expensive, rigid, and has terrible usability. But he felt that, to compete, he would need to master concepts that were too “complex” (JSON, APIs, Microservices).

In the end, he said: “The lion wants to roar one last time.”

He wanted to rewrite an entire ERP. My answer to him — and to you — is that the “cat’s leap” (or the lion’s) is not in reinventing the wheel, but in understanding the new market dynamics.

1. The Opportunity: The “Unbundling” of ERPs

The old dream was: “I’m going to make a system that does everything: Financial, HR, Inventory, Tax.” Forget that. That ocean is red. Big ERPs buy and swallow smaller ones every day.

But these “Generalist Monsters” have a giant Achilles’ heel: They are bad at almost everything. They do everything “grade C.” The UX is terrible, the screens are cluttered, and customization costs a fortune.

This is where Unicorns are born.

The market has shifted to specialist solutions (Micro-SaaS). Instead of creating an entire ERP, you create a satellite solution that solves a specific pain with a “grade A.”

• Is the ERP’s HR module confusing? Create a digital admission platform with incredible UX.
• Is the Purchasing module bureaucratic? Create a quotation App with AI.

The secret is not to replace the ERP, it is to integrate with it. Your product shines in UX, solves the pain, and “talks” fluently with the legacy dinosaur.

But to do this, your Delphi needs to leave the island.

2. The Technical Bridge: Why You Need the Modern

To create this agile product that connects to the client’s ERP, you can no longer depend on the closed client-server architecture of the 90s. You need integration tools.

Here enter the “boogeymen” that scared my reader:

A. JSON: The Language of Integration

My reader thought he needed to write complex parsers. The Reality: JSON is just the “glue” that binds your innovative product to the client’s rigid ERP. Don’t waste time bit-twiddling. In modern Delphi (and the Dext framework), you use Attributes. You decorate your class, and the framework takes care of packing and unpacking the data for the ERP API. Focus on the business rule, let the framework handle the transport.

B. Interfaces: The Key to Flexibility

Your product will need to talk to SAP’s ERP today and Totvs’ tomorrow. If you hardcode the code in the screen, you die on the beach. Use Interfaces to create “Adapters”.

• Create an IIntegrationService.
• The rest of your system doesn’t know if it’s talking to Oracle or SQL Server. This allows your MVP to scale to multiple clients without rewriting code.

3. From MVP to Unicorn (Alone)

The most inspiring part of the email was the ambition. 10 years ago, creating a competitive product alone was impossible.

Today, a developer’s leverage is infinite:

1. Frameworks (Dext): Give you the infrastructure of an entire company (Log, Auth, ORM, Tests) ready-made.
2. Modern UX: With native Delphi, we can deliver extreme performance with modern visuals, easily surpassing the slow web screens of big ERPs.
3. Surgical Focus: While the giant ERP takes 6 months to change a button, you deliver a new feature in 2 days.

The reader was right to want to roar, but the strategy is not to fight for territory in the entire jungle against the 800kg gorilla. The strategy is to be the most agile predator, attacking where the giant is slow and vulnerable.

The tools for this are in your hand. Modern Delphi is the perfect weapon to build these high-performance “satellites.”

The time has come for Delphi Startups to come out of invisibility. While the market gets lost in unnecessary complexity, we have the ultimate productivity tool.

Don’t let anyone say your tool is the past. With the right strategy, it is your unfair competitive advantage. The world doesn’t need another giant ERP; it needs your agile solution.

It’s time to shine.

The market is begging for usability and efficiency. Are you going to let this opportunity pass?

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Liked the strategic vision? I am documenting the technical tools to build these products (APIs, Interfaces, Dext) in my book and on GitHub. Let’s build the future.

#Delphi #SaaS #Startup #SoftwareArchitecture #Dext #DextFramework #ERP #MicroSaaS