inflexible, hardly. Generally speaking, ERP systems are limited only by the vendor toolset. Even then, given that ERP systems are all data-driven you can work around that limitation if you're willing to write/integrate standalone utility applications...or utilize hybrid approach you're talking about.
CRM and HR are the two areas where most ERP systems fall short simply because they aren't generally considered central to the core concept of "resource planning". Most if not all ERP systems have simplistic CRM and HR modules, but those tend to fall far short of robust. As has always been the case, markets exist to meet these needs. The cloud is just a relatively new delivery mechanism for these services. For CRM especially, this delivery mechanism works well because a companies sales force is on the road more than anyone else in the organization.
As a final note, I don't see companies rebelling against ERP. Being a software developer, what I see are companies trying to maximize their investment in the software they have bought and paid for. Just this last year I completely rewrote a planning engine for one particular ERP system to handle alternate items on Bills of Material in a way I've yet to see any ERP system do, and improvements to both inventory turns and raw material costs were astonishing. Bottom line...software is never inflexible, only people are inflexible.
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