Time for CLOUD ERP’s?
Posted On April 4, 2011
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0 Cloud ERP apps are back in the news as mentioned in a recent issues of TED magazine, emails and business newspapers. The buzz is growing and increasing ERP system and maintenance costs make them appear to be more economical. One of the strongest appeals is that the upgrades, patches and fixes appear with out effort or cost. But there are major concerns because business information may be outside of your control.
Outsourcing software functions
Outscouring service functions because there may be some economic benefit such as printing and mailing of invoices like to Billtrust or Invoice Connection make sense for some distributors. While selling prices are exposed to the vender providing the distribution of your invoices, good agreements can give a company comfort. One of the fears has always been that your selling price might be harvested without your knowledge.
Outscouring service functions because there may be some economic benefit such as printing and mailing of invoices like to Billtrust or Invoice Connection make sense for some distributors. While selling prices are exposed to the vender providing the distribution of your invoices, good agreements can give a company comfort. One of the fears has always been that your selling price might be harvested without your knowledge.
Other Cloud Services
Recently Trade Service introduced a Cloud application of product catalogs and annotation tools named “Submittal Manager” where you can search and find catalog pages, annotate them and build a submittal package of catalog pages for an engineer or architect for a project approval. This type of Cloud application doesn’t require that the distributor expose any business information, but it does allow the distributor to tap into services that increase the distributors personnel.
Recently Trade Service introduced a Cloud application of product catalogs and annotation tools named “Submittal Manager” where you can search and find catalog pages, annotate them and build a submittal package of catalog pages for an engineer or architect for a project approval. This type of Cloud application doesn’t require that the distributor expose any business information, but it does allow the distributor to tap into services that increase the distributors personnel.
The problem with Cloud ERP’s
It is quite another thing for a distributor to convert their company’s ERP software (which they paid for and paid for upgrades), to software that runs on the Internet— Cloud (SaaS) type offerings that are hosted on the Internet at either the sellers place of business or at a server farm located in some far off distant location. Like any new and emerging technology Cloud/SaaS ERP systems are being touted by some of the largest software companies in the world: Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle , and Infor.
The basic Question is:
It is quite another thing for a distributor to convert their company’s ERP software (which they paid for and paid for upgrades), to software that runs on the Internet— Cloud (SaaS) type offerings that are hosted on the Internet at either the sellers place of business or at a server farm located in some far off distant location. Like any new and emerging technology Cloud/SaaS ERP systems are being touted by some of the largest software companies in the world: Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle , and Infor.
The basic Question is:
Aside from answering the most basic question about how you get your business information and sales history back if you decide to switch to another Cloud system or go back to an in-house system, there are some questions about performance that many will want to investigate.
Electrical distributors are different from traditional distribution in that they run a business that has high transactions rates (large line items and a lot of transactions per day) and very large SKU inventories. In addition some will have different branch location and different security needs. There are other issues such as:
Electrical distributors are different from traditional distribution in that they run a business that has high transactions rates (large line items and a lot of transactions per day) and very large SKU inventories. In addition some will have different branch location and different security needs. There are other issues such as:
- High transactions volumes, SPA and pricing issues and updates all offer opportunities to put enormous strain on your Internet connection, regardless of how big it is. Then there is the issue that some Cloud /SaaS ERPs are built with smaller distributors in mind.
- The Internet does NOT offer uninterrupted service regardless of the speed and bandwidth. So what would be your backup plan be if the Internet goes down or your SaaS/Cloud application server fails?
As you investigate these Cloud apps, what concerns you the most? Share what you have found.
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