innovativeitc.typepad.comInnovative ERP Strategies - A Forum for Superior Solutions

Innovative ERP Strategies is a forum created by Innovative IT Consulting. It's based on our experience, beliefs and approach to helping emerging companies use information technology to their best advantage, take advantage of best practices, and just plain get results. Paul Sita, Ph.D and John Pellegrino, 631-549-1685, www.innovativeitc.com Home June 19, 2007 The Latest Price List and other follies I hate to rant. But pricing continues to be one of the areas that drives ERP customer (and their consultants) CRAZY. In the due diligence phase of ERP projects, pricing always gets a closer look. I recently had a conversation with a really top-notch salesman from a top-notch ERP provider, attempting to review some budgetary pricing. At least 3 times - not just once, not twice, but at least 3 times, as we went over the pricing and I asked questions - my question was met with -" I'm not sure I got that right, I think that's changed, the terminology is confusing". A conversation with another VAR resulted in him telling me that there are two ways to price the solution and I'll forward you some spreadsheets so you can figure out which one is best for you. That's great. Now I have to become an expert in a particular solution's pricing - and there's MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PRICE IT. If the ERP vendors and their sales teams can't keep it straight - how can customers have any confidence that what they're being quoted has any grounding in reality? I'd rather not name names - unless those of you out there ask me to - and please share your experiences. It's time we had some sanity here. That's my rant. What's yours? Jun 19, 2007 1:10:42 PM | ERP strategy Comment 0 Reblog It 0 June 07, 2007 "C" is for consolidation, or is that confusion! It's hard to argue with the fact that the ERP space is consolidating. Whether it will continue to consolidate or not is not a foregone conclusion in my mind. Certainly in the Tier 1 and upper Tier 2 space, the market can't support 100 solutions. An ERP system capable of supporting large enterprises is simply too complex, requires too much support and ongoing T&D for anything but a large company behind it. In the middle market, it's another story entirely. What I find surprising is that I only seem to hear of people on the extreme sides of the fence - those who don't find consolidation to be an issue at all, and those who because of consolidation won't look at anything other than a solution from SAP , Oracle or Microsoft . The vendors are partly to blame for this - with their lack of candor about their strategies. Take Infor , for example. They have become a fairly large company through a series of acquisitions. However I challenge even the more ardent ERP expert to list even half the ERP products under the Infor umbrella, much less what the future of those products is. So, CONSOLIDATION REIGNS , I mean CONFUSION REIGNS . What do you think? Jun 7, 2007 7:02:58 AM | ERP strategy Comment 0 Reblog It 0 February 25, 2007 E is for enterprise - isn't that everything? With all the consolidation going on in the business application space, something has gone unnoticed. Just about every vendor offering a solution wants to be considered an "ERP" vendor. Of course E is for enterprise- and even smaller customers want to be considered enterprises too. On the other hand, ERP is notorious and synonymous with complex, costly and prone to failure, and noone wants to be that. So we have software vendors claiming to be ERP vendors, and customers who want to be considered enterprises, and it's starting to be pretty meaningless!! So what is it? Can you have it both ways? To really be considered an ERP, an application has to start from a single, unified design. The application has to include all critical business and financial functions, starting with planning and forecasting, to pricing, customer and supplier management (not just maintenance), manufacturing, scheduling, order management, billing, financial accounting and reporting. Certain things don't have to be part of this integrated system. Things such as Business intelligence, CRM, Sales planning, can be standalone or interfaced to a core ERP system. When you look at the tier 1 ERP vendors such as SAP or Oracle , you get a good idea of what the potential for a full enterprise implementation might be. But customers have to separate the marketing hype from the reality. So many of the ERP vendors have been on an acquisition binge, acquiring older ERP systems and then trying to supplement them with everything from soup to nuts, thinking that this is what they need to do. In many cases, they are making things worse! Unless these acquired systems are re-developed with a common tool set or architecture, they run the risk of being no better than loosely coupled applications. With the current state of the market, it is my opinion that customers shouldn't be looking for one package to do everything, just everything important! This is likely to change rapidly over the next several years. So when you're speaking with your potential ERP vendor, ask where the pieces came from, how and when they were developed, and how many customers are using the "enterprise-wide" solution so you can relate this to your particular enterprise. Then decide for yourself if what you're being offered is really an ERP contender or just a pretender. Feb 25, 2007 8:16:19 PM | ERP strategy Comment 0 Reblog It 0 January 25, 2007 The Widget makes a comeback! In my many (too many?) years in the software and consulting industry, the term "widget" got to be a commonly used term. It was always used in generic software demos, Sample Company A who makes widgets. . . and on the demo went. Of course clients never liked this. It does them little good to see a demo with products that have a weird name, and customers that aren't their own. Of course now we always do demos with client-specific data ( see our white paper on ERP selection best practices ) to make the sofware accessible and meaningful to end users who don't deal with new software applications on a day to day basis. Does this mean the end of the widget? Quite the contrary! The widget is back, bigger and better (well better, if not bigger) than ever. In the world of blogging, the widget is a real beast! A widget is a small tool, component, feature - some small software application (applet?) that gives provides a specific capability on your BLOG , one of my favorite topics. Widgets are being created left and right. Could be a clock, a counter, a bookmark, a sign-in box, etc. And with open API's the library of widgets is growing exponentially. For information on widgets, and on blogs in general, please check out typepad , or sixapart , wordpress , some of the companies behind the blogging revolution. Check out a few blogs, and find the widgets -- you'll be impressed! Jan 25, 2007 12:20:07 PM | IT Strategy Comment 0 Reblog It 0 January 17, 2007 Not so small business! You can hardly pick up anything pertaining to Business Applications or ERP without hearing the term SMB, Small and Medium Business. Every vendor has an SMB team, and the prevailing thinking is that the "mid-market" (aka SMB) represents huge opportunity. I couldn't agree more. But let's not equate small with simple! Let's not equate small with unsophisticated. And let's not equate small with small-time. What we're finding is that there is a new class of SMB's out there - companies that are 20, 30, 50, 70 or 100 million in sales that have needs that are almost as complex as far larger companies. In many cases, they've been successful growing because of an intense focus on customer satisfaction, or in focusing on a niche. And they have some very customized processes and approaches. What they don't have are the resources, particularly IT management and strategic management and planning skills that it takes to re-engineer and streamline. That's where we come in. It creeps up on them. Many of these companies don't even realize how complex...