We see many blogs, and articles written by several industry veterans, functional consultants, IT consultants, management consultants and definitely by many product-selling companies on “what ERP to choose and what not” . Businesses keep on “comparing between several available domestic and internal ERPs or accounting systems“. At the same time, we see several articles on “ERP selection criteria or ERP implementation Partner selection criteria“.
We don’t know whether there is any golden arrow to hit the target or not when it comes to choosing the right ERP solution and implementation partner but definitely, as a management consultant and IT consultant, we help companies from various industries to nullify maximum risk associated with this process.
We have seen many globally accredited ERP products implemented by so-called tier-I IT firms have failed miserably and management had to have a blood bath. We have also seen many big corporations use locally customized ERP solutions successfully. Many companies even after a good effort couldn’t implement so-called branded ERP solutions from renowned international companies and few could implement just a few modules of an ERP and simultaneously use Excel/spreadsheet and tally or other accounting software.
Many companies try to implement open-source ERP, but most people struggle to make that fit for their organization and few achieve the desired objective at some cost which may or may not be less than any other proprietary software.
Many customized local ERP vendors have been successfully helping companies from diverse industries or only to a specific industry with an exclusively developed industry-specific solution which has been tested, proven and better accepted by that industry fraternity.
With the advancement of technology and the kind of awareness that has been created by several IT solutions companies or even management from core industries are also looking out for new and disruptive solutions to stay ahead of the curve. Due to this IT product or solutions market has become much mature and competitive as well.
There has been a war where various IT companies at their level have been investing huge money in R&D, new product development or skill/competency building so that they could outpace other competitors which is the case for ERP selling companies as well. Surprisingly one or two companies still have been able to dominate the ERP market even though their implementation partners have been facing fierce competition and perishing.
What is very pathetic is that just to win a project many tier-I or tier-II Software companies who are trusted by a client need to quote much below their tolerance point and later on outsource the job to tier-III companies or hire a consultant to negotiate loss or make marginal profit where the risk factor related to quality delivery or possibilities of implementation failure arise.
Anyway, now customers have more choices to choose from a lot of such ERP products and ERP implementation partners as well as change implementation partners in some cases which is not possible in the case of a “proprietary ERP solution “. The affordability of Cloud solutions especially on the SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] model has reduced the entry barrier as nowadays most progressive companies are going on the OPEX model instead of the CAPEX model which gives comfort to CFOs maintaining cash flow.
We, Softweb Technologies, as an IT consultant and Management consulting firm, operating for the last 24 years, having 80+ resources and service clients from 12+ countries with many services and solutions suggest our clients not get bogged down by several articles available in Google search like
- What key Differences between SAP B1 vs S4 HANA concerning functionality, prices, and applicability?
- Should we Choose SAP B1, SAP S4 HANA or SAP Business ByDesign?
- What Is the Difference Between a Local Customized ERP and SAP?
- Industry specific ERP or any ERP that requires a lot of customizations to meet industry-specific needs?
- Dynamics 365 Business Central vs SAP Business One or SAP S4 HANA or Oracle E-Business Suite / Netsuite: Which is better?
- Is Tally ERP really an ERP?
- Difference between a true ERP and an accounting system?
- Should we hire consulting firms like McKinsey & Company, The Big Four global accounting/audit firms like Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and KPMG or any Tier-I /Tier-II software companies like Accenture, IBM, TCS, Wipro, Infosys etc.
- Should we choose a local implementation partner or any partner from any global location or implementation partner and support partners will be the same or different?
- Should we choose open-source ERP like Odoo, ERPNext or any proprietary ERP software?
These sorts of questions never end when it comes to choosing the right ERP or the right implementation partner and thus companies call us or other management consulting firms knowing the risk associated with wrong decisions and adverse implications on business.
Management must know what a true ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] is i.e. how an Enterprise [different departments like sales, purchase, stores, logistics, supply chain, finance, production etc. carry out various functionalities using policy-driven processes of that business entity] can optimally utilize Resources [Man, Materials, Money, Machine & Market] and do the Planning [in broader sense planning, organizing, directing, staffing, monitoring & controlling and Reporting] with a help of a robust, flexible and scalable IT framework. Like all other products, all ERPs are also sold with different brand names like SAP B1, SAP S4 HANA, SAP Business ByDesign, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Oracle E-Business Suite, PACE360, Epicor, Acumatica, Odoo, ERPNext, Sage, QAD, Infor etc. to name a few.
Management also must first assess be it internally or through external consultants the existing culture [Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), Change Management Model ] besides doing a SWOT [ Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat] analysis, Porter’s Five force analysis with 4Ps of Marketing Mix (4Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion), value chain analysis, balanced scorecard, Ansoff Matrix, PEST analysis, McKinsey 7-S Framework, Risk Management Framework, Process Improvement Framework (e.g., Kaizen, Six Sigma), Business Continuity Planning to name a few and fine-tune their vision-Goal-objectives to lay down Digital Transformation Framework before narrowing down to check the credibility of an ERP solution [ industry-specific or not, flexible & scale or not, affordability etc.] or implementation partner [ experience, market feed about support, cost-effectiveness etc. ]
Read here Why ERP implementation fails
We do believe in providing end-to-end enterprise business solutions for our clients keeping in mind their long-term goals and vision because without this we just become a company like any other non-standard IT firm which we don’t like to be until and unless forced by the market dynamics.
We, as one window IT solution & service provider provide an array of IT solutions to help our customers achieve digital transformation and automation in collaboration with several globally & locally renowned partners, industry veterans & consultants. When it comes to ERP solutions we try to create a basic but flexible & scalable platform for in future adoption of digital transformation by using & re-engineering the PACE360 ERP software framework.
We also provide resources and utilize the competencies of domain experts, solutions experts and industry veterans to implement several ERP solutions globally available i.e. SAP B1, SAP S4 HANA, SAP Business ByDesign, Dynamics 365 Business Central, Oracle E-Business Suite, PACE360, Epicor, Acumatica, Odoo, ERPNext, Sage, QAD, Infor etc to name a few to ultimately help meeting our customers need. Hope you all have noticed that only ERP or a few modules of an ERP or just accounting software is not enough for any company now–a–days considering the need for fast and correct decision-making at the right time.
Thus all global corporations that provide ERP are coming up with a n-number of IT solutions which could be integrated with ERP. We thus many times play the role of system integrator and add-on development Company to reduce the cost burden of our clients. We have been closely working with disruptive leaders to achieve their goals by developing disruptive or at least unique or very specific solutions for them using disruptive & emerging technology [ AI/ML, GenAI, Business Analytics, Cloud computing, IOT, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Blockchain etc. ]
Read here: Embrace Intelligent Automation
