Month: November 2006

Theory H.O.W.: How Organizations could Work

We recently saw a presentation by Howard Cavallaro on the various types of manufacturing companies and how they interact with their supply chain. It was a very good presentation. He now has a new book out called: Theory H.O.W.: How Organizations Could Work
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The publisher’s description is as follows: Theory H.O.W. was written to enable small and medium-size manufacturing companies who want to aggressively challenge the status quo. With more than 40 years of combined experience in manufacturing, supply-chain, and business management, authors Carol Ptak and Harold Cavallaro have developed applicable theories about how to run a successful company. Using the Theory H.O.W. business transformation approach, organizations will be able to formulate strategies that are supported by specific tactical actions, systems, technology, and other tools to achieve a desired, sustainable competitive advantage. The backbone behind the Theory H.O.W. process is actually a combination of key elements–the ability to classify, define, or characterize key business elements and their effects on business performance and your organizations ability to produce greater results.

We are awaiting our copy, but we would suggest that based on the presentation, the book is worth reading!

SAP vs. Oracle

Here is an interesting comparison between the two leaders in the ERP space, SAP vs. Oracle. This is a hotly contested debate between the two giants in Enterprise Resource Planning Software. A company that is considering moving to an ERP will likely have one or both competing for their business.

They have distinctly different approaches to both the software business and to their software architecture. Once only for the Fortune 500, the mid-sized marketplace is looking more frequently at these software offerings. This is due to the consolidation of ERP software offerings, post 9/11, and due to the increased focus that SAP and Oracle have placed on this mid-market space.


SAP vs. Oracle
Alisher Muhammadiev

Both ERP rivals Oracle and SAP are different as their products

Enterprise Resource Planning system was designed and implemented in more than 20 different industries and all ERP companies together generate every year a $60 billion dollars profit on the global market. The biggest part of this pie is shared by two software giants Oracle and SAP. Although they compete on the same market and target their products for common industries, they have very distinguished strategies, corporate culture and distinctive offers.

Information Technology has become an important part of any current business. The Enterprise Resource Planning system is a software package that was specially designed to help companies to run their businesses better. It consists of many modules. Each of the modules is used at different departments within one corporation. All those modules are interconnected with each other in one coherent system. According to the common definition of ERP – it is a system that processes all transactions in an organization and facilitates the planning, production and customer responses. It represents the companys culture. Moreover it can be thought of as the companys backbone coded into the software. That is why the ERP is so important and at the same time very expensive. Depending on the size of the project some companies spends from $2 to $130 million dollars for ERP implementation. Building an ERP package requires a lot of time and resources. ERP vendors develop, supply, and implement the ERP system as package software for enterprises. Some companies are loyal to one vendor and use all modules from same vendor. Others decide to mix together compatible modules from different vendors. This approach is called a best of breed system. When the vendors product is built in-house all work including software development, implementation, customers support and training are done by the vendor alone with no help from the outside or from outsourcing.

The world second-largest software supplier Oracle was founded in 1977 in the United States and by 1999 the company was serving 5000 clients in over 140 countries. Oracle is well known for their database systems rather than enterprise resource planning system. It is rating as the second ERP package vendor after SAP on the ERP market. Oracle has a reputation as a company with strong software support, a large financial budget and stable position among the competitors. At the same time the corporate culture of Oracle is conservative on benefits from revenues. Which causes such problems as inflexibility and slow implementation of their ERP products. In other words, the company lacks partners and consultants for technical expertise.

Hence the main player on ERP market is the German company SAP (Systems, Application, and Products in Data processing) which was founded in 1972. It was the first time in software history that a company outside of the United States had gained such success. In 1999 SAP had more than twice as many customers as Oracle in 100 countries around the world. Unlike Oracle, SAP decided to work in close collaboration with many other companies. The companys success derives from the fact that SAP invests 20 percent of the profit on research and shares 80 percent of the total revenues with their alliance partners. Moreover, SAP has many consultants who provide help and training to their customers. And there are even third party developers who supply a large number of add-in programs that can work together with SAPs products. As a result, customers enjoy more flexible and fast implementation of their ERP systems. There is no doubt about why SAP became a leader.

SAP and Oracle Training – Get the training you need to be certified or perform at a higher level. ERPandMore.com offers top ERP training. Click here for more information.

Because Oracle products are built in-house in contrast to SAPs solutions they are based on one database system. Oracle became popular as a manufacturer of developing products that can be easily integrated with other models from other vendors, enabling them to build a best of breed system. The ERP packages from Oracle are based on three main parts: Supply, Demand and Finance with several included modules. Oracle offers a strong enterprise system that is able to accommodate more than 1000 users whereas the ERP package from SAP can be scaled from 25 to 1000 users. Such scalability is possible because of the high granularity of the SAP modules. The downside of the SAPs ERP systems is that the SAP vendor forces its customers to change or adapt their corporate culture to match how SAP software works. However as SAP as Oracle, both provide incredible enterprise resource planning systems which help many companies to operate more efficiently and more effectively these days.

Both vendors offer great ERP packages but choosing the right package among both is not an easy job. For SAP, being a leader on the market it does not always mean that SAP can offer the right software that customers want to have; and Oracle can appear as a good alternative for this case. If the company is limited in resources and restrained in time the best solution would be to go for SAP products. However the company with distinguished values which creates a competitive advantage would prefer to choose the Oracle to build a unique system that will fit well to their businesses. The lesson is that before moving to ERP the senior manager needs to balance all constraints and needs for the companys future.

Alisher Muhammadiev Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea tel: +82-10-2304-0074 email: so***@ih******.kr web site: http://puzzleservice.com

sap vs. oracle

sap vs. oracle

ERP Benefits

In any discussion on implementing an ERP system, the question “What are the benefits of an ERP System?” appears early in most selection cycles. We have had to look up these benefits on more than one occasion, so we thought we would document them here for you.

A good reference on calculating the benefits and ROI for an ERP solution is the book: Show Me the Money: How to Determine ROI in People, Projects, and Programserp benefits

Benefits

  1. Real time information throughout all entire company
  2. Better visibility into the performance of operational areas
  3. Data standardization and accuracy across the enterprise. Single version of “The Truth!”
  4. Best-practices or proven methodologies are included in the applications
  5. Creates organizational efficiencies.
  6. Allows for analysis and reporting for long-term planning

Significant Features on an ERP System

  1. Information entered once into system
  2. Can allow for the use of the best practices
  3. Can be further developed
  4. Based on reliable file structure
  5. Provides functionality to interact with other elements in the process
  6. Provides report writers and other tools for data inquiries

ROI and Cost Savings
Here are some areas to look for possible ROI:

  1. Reduce Inventory through better visibility and efficiency
  2. Savings through the reduction in duplicated efforts
  3. More efficient operations allowing for increase in ability to process transactions (added capacity)
  4. Reduction in non-value added activities (lean processing)
  5. Higher utilization of employees (less transactional, more analytical)
  6. Improvement in decision making through more accurate and real-time data

We have more benefits listed on our ERP Benefits Page.

erp benefits

ERP Software Vendors

This is a more general article, but it has some interesting history on a few ERP packages. Trivia time… Do you know what QAD stands for?

ERP Software Vendors
Jennifer Bailey

Enterprise resource planning systems are management information systems that integrate and automate business practices associated with the operations, production and distribution aspects of a company engaged in manufacturing products or services.

Some of the well-known vendors of ERP systems are SAP AG, Oracle Applications, Microsoft Dynamics, SSA Global Technologies, QAD and Exact Software.

Founded in 1972, SAP AG is the largest European software enterprise, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. SAP is an acronym for Systems, Applications And Products in Data Processing. It is the largest ERP solution software provider in terms of revenue. SAP products focus on ERP systems. Its main product is SAP R/3. R stands for real-time data processing, and the number 3 relates to the three-tier application architecture of its database, application server and client. There are over 91,500 SAP installations at more than 28,000 companies. Over 12 million people in more than 120 countries use SAP products.

Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977. It is one of the major companies involved in the development of database management systems, tools for database development, and enterprise resource planning software. The Oracle e-Business Suite includes software that perform financial, manufacturing and Human Resource Management Systems related functions. User access to these facilities is provided through a browser interface over the Internet or corporate intranet.

QAD produces Enterprise Resource Planning software for six main industries — Automotive, Consumer Products, Electronics, Food and Beverage, Industrial Products and Life Sciences. QAD product, MFG/PRO is an ERP software containing multiple optional modules and add on products like AIM Warehousing and Trade Management.

Exact Software was founded in 1984. It is involved in developing software for logistics, Human Resource Management, Customer Relationship Management, e-business and Enterprise Resource Planning.

Every company needs a core transactional system that records the information from its most important business processes. Prior to choosing a vendor for an enterprise, it is important to plan the budget since it is extremely difficult to upgrade already installed ERP software.

ERP Software provides detailed information on ERP Software, ERP Software Solutions, ERP Software Companies, Manufacturing ERP Software and more. ERP Software is affiliated with HR Software Solutions.

ERP Books

ERPandMore is pleased to announce the opening of our new ERP Bookstore. Containing the latest books on Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Product Lifecycle Management, and Process Improvement topics, this new bookstore is your resource to finding the information you need to successfully navigate a project.

You can find this new bookstore off of our home page by clicking “Books” or by going directly to:

http://www.erpandmore.com/books/

We hope you find this a valuable information resource!

The Future of ERP

The Future of ERP
November 15, 2006
By James Maguire

The dream of enterprise resource planning systems is that a single application can track and monitor all of a business’s functions. In a perfect world, a manager opens a single ERP app to find data about any aspect of the business, from financials to HR to distribution schedules.

Alas, we’re not there yet – or at least most companies aren’t.

Looking at the ERP landscape, “there still tends to be a lot of disparate components, that are either homegrown or older packages,” says Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman.

Moreover, there are still a lot of gaps in ERP systems, particularly in industries where ERP functionality has grown up from its historic origins in manufacturing. There are even gaps in core ERP areas, Hamerman tells Datamation, “where they just haven’t done a particularly good job, in areas like budgeting, and recruitment…where the vast majority of customer use something other than their ERP vendor.”

But despite the challenges, the movement toward a global ERP system is a key factor shaping the future of enterprise resource planning.

“It’s a trend that’s going on, and most companies are going in this direction: Read more about The Future of ERP

What is your ERP interface?

Being techno-enthusiasts, how ERP vendors are pushing the envelope to develop new and easier ways for people to process their business data has fascinated us. But we often forget the end-user, who simply has to work with an ERP Software tool day-in and day-out.

Recently we participated in a series of demonstrations that included SAP MySAP, Oracle EBusiness Suite, Microsoft Dynamics AX, IFS, and JD Edwards Enterprise One. The interesting outcome of this demonstration series was that the users gravitated towards the systems that had “old fashioned” grey data form. They were confused by the Web Based Portals and any other non-traditional form. MySAP even showed a great interface from Adobe Forms, but that confused the team even more.

Bottom line, the team was looking at the systems from the current frame of reference that they all possessed, which was a Windows-like form that was easy to understand. It was interesting in how little they grasped that was outside of what they were familiar with. Even with great explanations on how this could help them, if it didn’t make sense, it didn’t register.

Lesson learned: keep the discussion within the frame of reference within the users and introduce the new interface options in small easy to understand sessions. Do not give the latest and greatest to a group that cannot conceptualize it.

An ERP who owns who

If you have been around even a short time in the ERP software business as either a user or a provider, you are sure to know of the latest acquisitions. The big ones of course are all the companies Infor bought as well as the Oracle mega mergers of PeopleSoft/JDE. Here is a website dedicated to tracking these acquisitions, called fittingly enough The ERP Graveyard.

The ERP Graveyard has a spreadsheet of acquisitions going back to the 1990’s. So if you are interested in what happened to so-and-so software, you might find your answer to dead ERPs here.