Minggu, 06 Maret 2011
Midmarket ERP Solutions Buyer’s Guide
For all but the smallest organizations, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system promises big gains, helping to grow revenue, increase productivity company-wide, improve efficiency throughout the enterprise, and manage costs. In this guide, you’ll find details on what to look for in a midmarket ERP package, the benefits it should bring to your midsize company, and what you need to know before you commit to a solution.
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Lean Manufacturing Support
BalasHapusAs the name implies, lean manufacturing is essentially using less of
everything. For midsize manufacturers with limited resources, this waste
reduction in production and business processes can be an especially
critical cost saver. With lean manufacturing, an organization can avoid
overproduction, excess inventory, wasted motion, unnecessary processes
and idle time. Lean manufacturing can also help an organization deliver
products more quickly to customers, be more fl exible and, ultimately,
succeed in a global marketplace.
A few vendors in this Buyer’s Guide support lean manufacturing, including
Infor, Oracle-PeopleSoft, and QAD (via an add-on module).
SOA
BalasHapusSOA — also called Web services — has been called the next big thing in
enterprise architecture. Infor defi nes it as “an architectural approach to
building and deploying software that is interoperable by design.” SOA
allows software capabilities to be easily connected and reused, making
it quicker and cheaper to assemble, deploy and sustain enterprise-grade
technology. With an SOA, organizations can more quickly adapt to
changing business processes.
Several midmarket ERP vendors support SOA, including Infor, QAD,
Microsoft and SAP. Infor’s Open SOA is a “building-block way of tying
together a heterogeneous IT architecture.” QAD has begun re-architecting
its line of business applications to allow it to connect in many diff erent
ways under an SOA; it currently uses QAD QXtend to “bridge SOA
requirements with [its] traditional software implementation model.”
Microsoft, of course, leverages .NET to support SOA, and SAP does it with
the open technology SAP NetWeaver platform, which supports the use of
Java, Microsoft .NET and IBM WebSphere development tools.
In its “ERP Providers Serving the Midmarket” report, AMR Research found
BalasHapusthat midsize organizations are using ERP to support a variety of business
issues, including globalization, lean manufacturing, conducting e-business,
consolidation, shared services, collaborating with suppliers and meeting the
requirements of new customers.
To wring the most benefi ts from an ERP solution, an organization has to use it to
its fullest capabilities. Considering the expense of acquiring and deploying an
ERP package, it’s surprising how underutilized it often turns out to be. According
to Aberdeen’s “2007 ERP in Manufacturing” survey, the average midsize company
uses only about 11 out of 24 generic ERP modules, or approximately 72 percent of
the available functionality. (Is this math right)
As midmarket companies extend their reach into markets around the world, they
require increasingly sophisticated systems to support and run their business.
With ERP, they can use enterprise-grade technology as a competitive weapon,
managing costs, introducing effi ciencies throughout the supply chain and
manufacturing processes, and streamlining and automating business processes
across the organization. For some companies, ERP can mean the diff erence
between success and failure.