Changing Thought Processes
Don’t let other programs in!
ERP systems were sold to the masses of Distributors with all of the most common features and functions that a software company could put under one banner. In the early days of ERP software, most developers added some additional functions that were not as robust as the user would like (i.e. analytics dashboards, CRM or a contact management system, marketing automation, SPA, pricing flexibility, etc). The sales price of the ERP software, hardware and installation were some of the limiting factors for many. As many would come to notice, there were some other highly focused/robust CRM, Warehouse, and other programs that would not link up with other disparate programs. ERP developers guarded and kept shut out of their ERP system for various reasons.
Technology bypassed many ERP companies starting about 10-15 years ago.
The “do everything” ERP’s kept the distributor from precisely measuring their business . But, there will be some that are happy to just measure their company the same way……They will be the ones that complain about their net being lower and not higher that the reported by the industry.
Along came Highly focused robust applications
Distributors wanted more robust purchasing, CRM and warehouse applications to mention a few. So they paid extra fees to their ERP vendor to “hook up” the robust applications. This was called “custom programming”. The problem that some distributors experienced after paying to “hook up” these highly focused and well developed programs, was that they could no-longer upgrade their base ERP system without paying more money. Distributors were back in the fire. They paid for different functions that kept them from upgrading their base ERP and still didn’t let them easily link to the very basic Excel programs.
They had to cobble together price matrix and customer notes and etc.
Distributors still could not measure their business precisely.
Enter middle ware software
The “do everything” ERP thinking is dead, many thought quietly. That sounds like heresy (or at least most ERP companies will tell you it is). They want to rip out the old system (decreasing what productivity you had) and sell you a new system, when you may not need a new ERP (and who wants to spend the money nowadays or retrain their staff?).
Middle ware allows a distributor to load software onto any existing ERP system to exchange files that can be used with all sorts of highly focused programs. The middle ware would house transaction data from many sources with other applications, such as a CRM, payroll, wireless inventory, online ordering or mobile applications. In other words, you can develop a “best of breed” technology infrastructure / applications for your business. And you can say good bye to time-consuming and error prone spreadsheet cobbling exercises of the past.
Middle ware could also be used to load on to a company you are buying, to be able to access their transactions without disrupting current productivity..
The key thought is that middle ware allows you to more precisely measure your business &/or a business you plan to buy in the future. That is a big deal for some companies.
Competitiveness in the future
Competitiveness now and in the future will require a distributor to think in terms of an integrated enterprise suite of programs that exchange data from a processing system. More importantly through the use of middle ware you’ll be able to tap into “best of breed” programs to more precisely measure your business or others. Middle ware software will be the glue that exchanges the need for data and files. After all, do you really think that an ERP system can be a master of all technology applications?
Consider Salesforce.com … could an industry ERP system replicate their expertise in sales force automation and contact management systems? And haven’t they made acquisitions to integrate other capabilities? Even an Oracle or an SAP acknowledge that they don’t have the best expertise for everything … hence they make acquisitions and have partner relationships. If these behemoths of companies acknowledge they are not the best for everything, how can industry specific ERP systems claim to be able to best serve all of your needs? I don’t think so.
Thinking outside the “Do it all ERP box” is critical to being competitive going forward.
How do you feel about your company’s ability too:
- Measure your business more precisely in real time?
- Measure your sales performance more precisely?
- Cross sell and up sell based on your customer’s product mix?
9 Comments
Where do we find middle ware that you described above?
We’d like to be able to measure in real time and have access to a number of other programs.
I guess you are talking about the way Amazon takes a selection and recommends additional items.That would be cool for us.
Just wish we could get outside sales to up sell.
Talk about something to think about….you did it.
we’ve never been able to get Infor to get us the dashboards we’ve asked for to help us better manage our business at the executive level. They’ve promised for years and under-delivered on a product and don’t have an answer. We looked at Phocas and now we’re looking at Yellowfin BI, http://www.yellowfinbi.com, and Tableau, http://www.tableausoftware.com. Both seem pretty simple to use, robust and are not too costly … and we can try it for free – that’s something my ERP company has never thought of!
Anyone have experience with dashboard software that they can recommend? We’re on Infor
we’re on eclipse and they are so locked up, we need to solve our problem of getting data out to move on.
Can anyone recommend a software to let us open up eclipse?
You could consider an on demand cloud based solution that offers a free trial… http://www.biondemand.com/businessintelligence
We’ve looked at http://www.tableausoftware.com and will look at http://www.biodemaid.com. Good suggestions. Thanks…these could fit into our plans
We are leaving from Epicor as quickly as possible and onto Infor’s Sx10. Infor is much more stable….we really like their idea of middle ware (Ion) and their vision of the future.
If I were you,and I was looking, I would be very careful of the Epicor sales person.
Well the “Do all ERP” has let us limp along for a number of year while paying out boat loads of money.
Dashboards that actually measure in real time would be a god send. There are so many more reports that are needed that erp companies in general don’t understand.
This concept bears more investigation.
If you are going to do another post about this subject, how about offering up some middle ware companies? with maybe some links.
The more I think about it, there are only so many ways you can enter an order and print an invoice. And we haven’t used eclipses inventory management since we found out it doesn’t really do best practices for us.
The brass ring for us would be deeper reports/dashboards and then the ability to add on some well focused programs that we could run in house.
The list of business needs that software can support has changed over 20 years.
This is a interesting way of looking at business needs once you adopt middle ware thinking. In fact it opens up a wide variety of options.
We’ve often thought after an erp software install that we were dealing with gun runners or drug dealers…nothing was as promised and you couldn’t find then after the sale.They talk about features and some functions and little about our business needs.
Most of the middle ware we’ve looked at is open and that opens up a bunch of possibilities….at least for us. Sure hope you elaborate with another post.
We have 11 different pcs of software we use and only 4 of them ‘talk’ to each other.
If there is a way for them to all talk to each other…….we’re for it. Sometimes we end up counting on fingers and still make mistakes.
Here in LA
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