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| White Papers
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12 criteria for selecting the best ERP system replacement: Epicor (July 2010)
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An ERP system is your information backbone and reaches into all areas of your business and value chain. Replacing it
can open unlimited business opportunities. The cornerstone of this effort is finding the right partner and specialist. Your
long-term business strategy will form the basis of the criteria for your selection of an ERP system replacement. Your
ERP provider must be part of your vision. It is the duty of your software provider to do its part to make sure your next
system will be your last ERP system replacement. This white paper explains the 12 criteria that allow you to identify and
select the solution that will meet these expectations. It’s no small matter to replace your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. By definition, the ERP system is your
information backbone and reaches into all areas of your business and value chain. Replacing it can be a difficult and
painful process. When it is done correctly, it can open unlimited business opportunities. The cornerstone of this effort is
finding the right partner to simplify this difficult transition – a partner that will maintain focus until you achieve your goals.
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Integrating information across the enterprise: Sage (March 2010)
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Faced with mounting global competition, companies are having to improve how they co-ordinate activity across the
company in order to maximise the value they deliver to customers and minimise costs. In turn, this is requiring them to
integrate previously discrete departmental information systems in order to enable such collaborative working.
Whether a company should achieve this by linking together existing departmental systems or implementing a single
integrated suite of applications across the business will largely depend on its particular situation. The one thing for sure
is that the common approach of attempting to share information across a business by having staff key the same data
into multiple applications is generally a perilous way of sourcing the data on which key business decisions will
subsequently be made. The following white paper begins by examining the strategic drivers that are forcing companies to reconsider how they
manage their activities, and the implications this has for the design of their information systems.
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Optimise your ERP system: how to avoid the implementation sins: Sage (March 10)
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems offer much potential to improve your way of doing business. By providing
accurate, real-time information throughout your supply chain, an ERP system can help your company be more
competitive. Seamless integration of information flows across all departments through a centralised database, provides
a unified view of the business, and enables management to make more effective, timely decisions. A successful ERP
implementation can provide better business intelligence, streamline business operations, reduce costs, enhance
collaboration, and ultimately help you grow your business.
While most organisations rely on enterprise resource planning systems, relatively few are able to truly optimise the
capabilities and functionality the software products can deliver. In fact, statistics show that more than 60% of ERP
implementations fail to meet expectations.
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Managing change effectively with ERP: Infor (March 2010)
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If your critical business data resides in different business systems or spreadsheets and your everyday processes are
not disciplined, your business lacks the agility to respond to change. These changes can range from an increase in
demand because of a customer’s shortened delivery time or several new large orders, to a geographic expansion of
your supply chain with global reach, to changes in trends that require new product introductions. As a result, your
management team is forced into a perpetual state of reaction to minimise the impact of these changes.
A flexible ERP system can be the foundation for a complete overhaul of your business processes and enable the agility
you need to accommodate virtually any type of change – quickly, easily and cost-efficiently. A flexible ERP system
provides two key capabilities and benefits: linking your disparate systems and automating the movement of information throughout your business provide
executives in your management chain with visibility into real-time business data, enabling the best decision-making
possible; and creating highly disciplined workflows provides the process consistency required to enable highly dependable
outcomes, regardless of what type of change may occur in your business.
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A director's guide to choosing and implementing ERP software: Access (Feb 2010)
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All distribution and manufacturing organisations rely on software
packages to help manage their business efficiently. As you might
have discovered yourself, the time inevitably comes when your
existing software no longer measures up.
If you’re thinking about updating your ERP software, sit down and
think hard about your business. Consider: availability of information. How easy is it to gain access to the
data held in your system? Do you have to dig out lots of figures to
run a report? Can you run a report yourself, or do you have to ask
someone from accounts or IT to do it for you? Would you be able to
do your job more efficiently if information was at your fingertips? Your customers. If you’d like to offer them a better service, think
about how you’d go about it. What do you need in order to get your products out there more quickly and efficiently and
on time, every time?
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Distribution systems: Solarsoft (October 2009)
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When fast and accurate fulfilment are key, you need software that will deliver. Distribution systems from Solarsoft are at
work across the world, delivering products 24/7. From industrial equipment to fast moving consumer goods, we help
businesses achieve rapid and accurate fulfilment with minimal inventory and optimised stock movements.
Solarsoft’s software can help you get the fundamentals right, with barcode readers or RFID tags for product traceability
and location tracking. For businesses in intensive supply chains, Solarsoft can help with EDI and e-commerce. Our
customers routinely achieve 20-40% productivity gains while cutting errors and increasing throughput.
With Solarsoft, your marketing, sales, purchasing and finance teams can share a single view across the business,
allowing more effective management of customer accounts, seamless handling of non-stock items and improved
financial control. Best of all, our systems will give you clear management information, letting managers focus on
improving sales, margins and performance, confident that day-to-day operations are in safe hands.
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Building a business case for next-generation enterprise apps: Epicor (May 2009)
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Are enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems really ever in need of a change? That question plagues most CEOs,
CIOs and CFOs as their legacy ERP system continue to chug along.
It’s no light matter to replace your ERP system: by definition, the ERP system is your financial and operational
backbone and reaches into all areas of your business and value-chain. Replacing it would appear to be a difficult and
intensive process – but done right, it can open unlimited business opportunities.
Companies decide to replace their ERP systems for a variety of reasons. At the most fundamental level, the question is
whether your current system supports or constrains your ability to execute business strategies that will make your
company successful and establish it as an industry leader. These systems automate only a single business function and
not an entire, cross-functional business process; they demand manual, labour-intensive processes such as re-keying
data into separate systems.
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Selecting an ERP solution: a guide: Infor (November 2008)
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Looking for the right ERP package for your small to mid-sized business (SMB) can be a daunting task. Although a fair amount
of information is available on the internet about the actual software packages themselves, there is little advice on how to
develop a good, simple strategy to evaluate and choose the right package for your company. This white paper is intended to
provide some of that much-needed guidance. The first step in choosing an ERP package is to establish a software selection committee. Members of this committee should
be decision makers in the organisation representing all relevant departments.
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Surviving in the electrical products industry: IBS (August 2008)
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Despite intense price competition for its volume products, the electrical products distribution industry remains
healthy and dynamic. In this industry, world-class companies are succeeding by providing high availability at the right
time, expanding into new geographic areas, implementing more efficient business systems, and focusing on ever-closer
relationships with suppliers, partners and customers.
This white paper takes a look at the issues faced by wholesalers and distributors of electrical products today. It examines the
current state of the industry and explores the issues confronting it for the future. The paper also spells out some of the
technological requirements that are specific to the industry.
Later, this white paper matches these requirements to the software products that IBS already provides to many leading
companies in this market segment. You will learn how key features of IBS software can make your electrical products
distribution business more efficient and more competitive.
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Enterprise applications software licensing and pricing, Q4 2007: Oracle (Jun 08)
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Forrester conducted licensing policy evaluations of leading enterprise applications vendors from June 2007 to August 2007.
Interviews were conducted with 51 vendor and user companies including Agresso, Deltek, Epicor Software, IFS, Infor, Lawson,
Microsoft, Oracle, QAD, Sage Software, SAP and Sterling Commerce.
Oracle and Agresso were found to have established early leadership among large enterprises thanks to their ability to
accommodate complexity and choice in licensing metrics and support for the enterprise software licensee bill of rights
(LBoR).
Microsoft, QAD, Sterling Commerce, Epicor Software, Lawson and Infor are Strong Performers but lack breadth in usagebased
metrics. SAP provides strong usage-based metrics but could improve on provisions in the LBoR. Microsoft, Oracle,
QAD, Agresso and Epicor Software lead in delivering on small and medium-sized business (SMB) requirements like choice in
user-based metrics and support for the LBoR.
Sterling Commerce, Lawson, Sage Software, SAP, Infor and Deltek are Strong Performers that offer competitive options but
could improve support for SMB requirements in the LBoR. IFS’s licensing and pricing models leave SMB customers with
limited choices but offer a simplified, easy-to-understand approach.
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Manifesto for a perfect lean market: QAD (February 2008)
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Efficiency is crucial to the success of every enterprise. For manufacturing companies, the need to continuously improve
efficiency – to be ‘lean’ by reducing or eliminating waste in terms of time and materials – has never been more important than
it is today.
Over the last 25 years, successful manufacturers have made dramatic improvements in the speed and efficiency of production.
But in a world of increasing global competition, shrinking margins and accelerating time-to-market requirements, the neverending
quest to be lean represents new and daunting challenges for manufacturing companies.
Add to this the rapidly changing landscape in the global enterprise software industry, and it’s no wonder manufacturing
companies are clamouring for more IT innovation, reduced applications complexity, better visionary leadership and far less
swashbuckling from industry titans SAP and Oracle.
The enterprise software arena, once a super-high growth industry, continues consolidating. Yet as the leading enterprise
software vendors just get larger, some industry observers fear that true innovation is being sacrificed, putting customers’
businesses in peril.
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Lean manufacturing: going lean, step by step, with IFS Applications (May 2005)
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In the relentless pursuit of profitability and competitiveness, more and more companies are turning to lean
manufacturing to reduce or eliminate waste in their production processes. Once confined to the automotive industry,
lean principles are becoming standard operating procedure in many industries today. The reason is simple: when
implemented with a good performance management system, lean principles have a proven track record of operational
and strategic success, which ultimately translates into increased value to the end customer.
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