by Nosferatu 10 Replies latest jw friends
Man, this is going to suck. I really don't see why a company of less than 50 employees needs a big fvvving system to handle the way everything flows. I could fix it all by eliminating one employee who buggers everything up within the company.
I know the WTS uses an ERP system, but they have more than 20 people working for them.
What are your experiences with ERP?
Oh man, I remember when the company I used to worked for did that. It was a horrible, horrible transition. *shudders*
We were also a small company and the ERP system made everything way to complicated and increased our paperwork. The company shut down a little over a year later.
What you'll find is that it is almost impossible to get a company of such small size to actually "work" with the system. Everyone will complain how the system dosen't work the way the flow of business does and eventually will abandon the system. I experienced this in both small and mid-sized companies with both ERP and CRM type systems. ERP systems really only begin to prove to be efficient in larger/more complex organizations.
j
What is ERP?
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning
Wikipedia definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration
In other words, a big pile of expensive hardware and software that controls the flow of business in the company.
I used to sell ERP systems. What one are you going with? It is often a very difficult first few months, but if you have selected the right one for the company it should reap rewards. There are some designed for smaller companies.
I worked for a smaller company with more than 20 employers - it's a nightmare and when I left they were still trying to fix problems and get systems to do what they wanted. I watched people get fired for missing the start up deadlines and people quit their jobs in simple frustration. I found it to be a lot of money spent for a more cumbersome process. sammieswife.
What one are you going with?
Made2Manage (M2M)
I havnt heard of that one in Australia. One benefit will be if the ERP and CRM are combined, so that you can get all information on a customer from the one place.
ERP Systems are notoriously difficult to implement without huge costs, typically run over budget and time. I have worked in software development and been on implementations that were quite disasterous.
That said, we (I was one of the tech leads) recently implemented a sytem in 11 months that covered all of ERP, CRM and Service Management and totally replaced our previous system. It was done on time and under budget. My company is about 1200 employees and we employed 50 full and part time employees on the implementation. We support the system in 3 manufacturing centers and 7 countries with a team of 10 developers and 4 business analysts. We manufacture and ship international, run paperless warehouses, interface with carriers, do electronic banking. We use electronic trade, automatically prepare customs documents, drop ship anywhere in the world and take orders up to 7:00 PM at night and still guarantee same day shippimg. We could not run the business without extremely sophisticated ERP.
Whatever you do, talk and go visit other companies who have implemented the same software as you are considering. Ask them what went well and what went wrong. Find out what they'd do differently today. Any software vendor will give you a list of reference accounts and most companies will be willing share their experiences.
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