Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ERP Competition And Challenges For SMEs/SMBs

SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) market situation is completely different from other market.

Competition –

The SME market is characterized by a lot of competitors, who are trying to be a market leader. The competition is hard and we have to fight to get a sale.

Less earning –

SME used to keep a little margin and they have little earning capacity.

Decision making –

SME Company takes about 6 months to a year for final decision making for ERP. You will have to wait and ensure awareness. You have to keep pushing the same winner buttons: sector specific, same vertical, state of the art solution and low cost price, lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) Company will not wait for you; you have to push all the time. Whenever they call you have to present there.

Characteristics of the SME customer –

They are hardworking, humble, simple minded etc. They work 24×7x365, they know more than anybody. Their approach is very humble and polite. They have proud of their business. They like simple solution for their organization. They are simple and flexible. They can change themselves according to business environment.

Perception of SME Company –

For SME, it is very difficult to maintain the overview of ERP since there are too many functionality and concept changes. It is necessary to understand the available resources and their utilization in ERP. There are too many bad stories of ERP failures, but you can control the development without ERP. You have to be careful in selecting of an ERP.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) –

Industry specific ERP template has no problem to stand up and say: I believe that this is the right solution for you dear customer. ERP covers the latest best practices and process need for a specific sub industry.

Read more about Small Scale Industries in India and their advantages. Also read Business Management Books on nickmutt.com

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

SAP B1 – SAP Business One Solutions And Implementation

SAP Business One (SAP B1) is an ERP software package from sap. 70% SAP B1 ERP customers are in SME segment. It made exclusively to meet the needs of small and medium size organization. SAP B1 has 14 core modules:

1. Administration Module
2. Financials Module
3. Sales Opportunities Module
4. Sales Module
5. Purchasing Module
6. Business Partners Module
7. Banking Module
8. Inventory Module
9. Production Module
10. MRP Module
11. Service Module
12. Human Resources Module
13. Reports Module
14. E-commerce

SAP B1 is integrated through SDK (Software Development Kit) component called DI API, DI API Server and UIAPI. SAP B1 has a GUI (Graphical User Interface) which offers a 2-tier (client/server) and Microsoft Windows. 3-tier architecture is possible with the help of Citrix server. SAP B1 provides other components that allow development of add-ons to the application.

SAP B1 Implementation

Vanila implementation (standard/rapid implementation) used to take 1-2 months time for all basic modules. If you wish to go for customizations it will take more time- based on your needs and wants. In the standard implementation organization has to change their process according to software. Before starting the implementation, organization must do GAP analysis, Process Mapping, SRS (System Requirement Study) it will be helpful in deciding and implementing the ERP.

Read more about SAP R/3 Architecture visit www.nickmutt.com and also read some Business Management Books.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Oracle With Microsoft CRM

Oracle has integrated with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM to capture more market for SMEs. Some large company has Oracle based solutions for the entire business and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is gaining its market share on the CRM market especially for mid segment market.

Suppose, you ship your goods all across the world and you do it in Oracle custom system for five years. In this case if you are looking low cost CRM solution you might still need integration between Oracle and CRM, because these are coming from different technology or software application.

If you are software developer – you should be informed about two solutions i.e. ‘MS SQL Linked Server approach – using ODBC driver to Oracle – create linked server in MS SQL Server and then use OPENQUERY, OPENROWSET technique to access Oracle data. You can create cross-platform Transact SQL stored procedures or views to facilitate your development’ and ‘Oracle Transparent Gateways and Generic Connectivity – these two will give you control from Oracle side. If you feel that you are more comfortable with Java or Oracle – this is the good way to go. Generic Connectivity gives you common solution to access database via ODBC and OLE DB mechanisms to FoxPro, Microsoft Access and other databases. More interesting is second product – Oracle Transparent Gateways. Its components are created individually for each platform, resulting in more efficient and fast access and better performance.’

Currently Oracle Transparent Gateways are available for the following platforms:

1. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Informix available on Solaris, HP/UX
2. Oracle Transparent Gateway for MS SQL Server available on NT.
3. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Ingres available on Solaris, HP/UX
4. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Teradata available on Solaris, NT, HP/UX
5. Oracle Transparent Gateway for RMS available on Alpha OpenVMS
6. Oracle Transparent Gateway for RDB available on Alpha OpenVMS
7. Oracle Transparent Gateway for Sybase available on Solaris, HP/UX, NT, AIX, Tru64

The main disadvantage is the fact that these products are not platforms independents and priced relatively high.

Read business management books and definition of erp on enterprise resource planning and business management

Competitive Quality – Areas Of Concern

1. Does the company have a common vision, which is shared by all the employees in its true sense?

2. Are the company’s strategies targeted for quantified measurable improvement in important areas and is building for future seen as more important than short-term benefits?

3. Does the company make effort to integrate employees’ job performance with key quality improvement targets and business results?

4. Does the company have an effective appraisal system, which takes care of the career progression of all the employees?

5. Does the company promote creativity & innovation and encourage employees to for ‘out of box’ thinking?

6. Is there a system for employee recognition and is good performance rewarded?

7. Is everyone in the organization given training on time management & stress management so that they can carry out the company’s task in the productive manner?

8. Does the company organize training programs for the suppliers to improve their ability to meet key requirements and response times?

9. Does the company have a system to generate healthy competition among suppliers of similar items to improve performance?

10. What is the level of your supplier satisfaction?

11. Are the suppliers paid in time?

12. Does the company constantly endeavor for development of capabilities of its suppliers?

13. Does the company regularly analyzes the quality costs and ensures that maximum focus is given to preventive measures?

14. Does the company effectively use JIT for reducing inventory?

15. Does the company use ERP system for their process?

16. Does the company make efforts to find out information from best in the class and make use of this information for process improvement?

17. Is the criterion of benchmarking well defined and documented?

18. Has the company introduced a system of quality MIS so as to ensure that the organization is on a constant hunt for opportunity signals for improvement.

19. Has the company significantly improved its market share from the previous year?

20. Is the company information management system accessible to every one without any difficulty?

21. Does the management involve them in recognizing the employee contributions?

Read some Negotiation Tips and Techniques important for any kind of business or deal. Also read about Risk Management and their model.

Copyright © Nick Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.