copy code,drag or close
Enterprise Resource Planning Software, so what is it?
By itself, the answer is nothing too new.
It is an expression that lies behind the ERP acronym. Over the last three to four years organisations like SAP have used it to charge extremely high prices for what is in reality a VB6 application consisting of many modules that run on desktop pc’s.
Just about the time Microsoft launched .NET a suite of applications written in the now outdated technologies came onto the market from a number of suppliers promoting their own ERP products. As the term resources cover a large number of business areas it’s not surprising that in practice ERP does reflect a particular business / sectors “set-of-modules”.
Understandably an enterprise involved in manufacturing would have a need for process modules, many enterprises would share common needs, such as payroll and sales. Like many off-the-shelf products their strength is you get a lot of functionality up front and for the most part the different modules do talk to each other, providing you do things the way they want you to do them.
If you want to do things differently than the ways provided by a partucular module then it is here that such companies make even large amounts of money from the specialist consultancy services required to make any necessary changes.
Businesses and Industries know this but they still go along with it because they feel they have to.
Of course Webica.NET services are not inexpensive, no cheap double puns about preferred supplier liaise, and competition is tuff etc. What is wrong with this situation is that businesses are not thinking strategically and they need to, quickly.
Too me many are still too slow to adopt new technologies. Modules hey, cool idea but on it’s own not enough and definitely not wise. As you read more articles on this site you’ll realise the answer is the same but it is important to realise that it is expressed in many different ways, depending upon the level of the discussion or article but it all comes down to technology.
What is called “.NET” changes everything so significantly. Whilst the modules approach is good in that different modules do plug together, they don’t always play the game the way you want them to, and making changes to that is very expensive.
We are usually talking about a consultancy / software house charging a thousand per day per head.
The strategic mistake is that they are not loosely coupled systems, and all applications, particularly Web (Webica) applications are written to this standard from line one of code.