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Posts Tagged ‘erp implementation’

ERP Software Upgrades: Don’t Turn the Upgrade Process into Another ERP Implementation

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 by Alex Smith

To continue to achieve a return on investment in the years following ERP implementation, manufacturers and distributors should be sure to take advantage of future software enhancements and upgrades to their ERP application. All too often, the organization becomes bogged down in the company’s daily operations and puts software upgrades on the backburner. When this occurs year after year, the software that serves as the information and transactional backbone of the enterprise becomes outdated and puts the organization at a competitive disadvantage, as technology and the mechanisms in which businesses interact with customers is constantly evolving. Read More…

When beginning the software upgrade process, TGI customers’ existing production environment of Enterprise 21 is compared to the latest software release, and all prior customer-specific enhancements and configurations are migrated into the newest release of Enterprise 21. From there, the new version of Enterprise 21 is installed on the customer’s hardware, and the customer begins to enact a thorough test plan. This test plan consists of completing a number sample transactions (in a test environment) to ensure that the customer’s requirements are met before beginning to conduct business with the most recent release of Enterprise 21.

Unlike many annual maintenance agreements that charge organizations additional software license fees for future software upgrades, TGI’s annual maintenance plan includes all future updates and upgrades to Enterprise 21 at no additional cost. This philosophy enables TGI customers to continue to realize a return on investment long after their implementation of Enterprise 21 and allows TGI customers to take advantage of the latest software technology for their business without hidden fees or complex financing offers.


ERP Software Selection: Evaluating Software Functionality and the ERP Vendor

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 by Alex Smith

When evaluating various ERP software solutions, scope of software functionality is an obvious priority for selecting the best functional fit for the manufacturing or distribution organization. Software selection teams should evaluate demonstrated software packages in a quantitative manner to determine the ERP system that best meets the organization’s specific software requirements. That being said, evaluating the software vendor, in addition to software functionality, is often overlooked in the ERP selection process. Read More…

It is important to analyze the ERP vendor as a company, not just the software the vendor is selling, as choosing an ERP software solution and vendor is a long-term commitment for the organization; in fact, the typical usage for an ERP software package (including future upgrades) can be anywhere between 10 and 15 years. Software selection teams should analyze the vendor’s approach to ERP implementation (Are implementation services delivered by the software vendor directly, or are they outsourced?), customer support (Are support calls answered by the software vendor directly, or are support calls outsourced to a third-party support provider?), ongoing maintenance, software upgrades, etc.  Please note that if you are acquiring an ERP software solution through a vendor’s value-added reseller (VAR) rather than directly from the ERP software vendor themselves, you should be asking these same questions of the VAR.

On a broader level, ERP selection teams should assess the software vendor’s long-term viability as an organization. A good question to ask potential software vendors is if their proposed software solution was developed by the vendor or if it was developed by a different company that the vendor acquired. In addition, selection teams should ask the vendor to provide the company’s revenue-per-employee ratio. In the ERP industry, once a software vendor’s revenue-per-employee ratio drops below a certain level, the vendor is likely to be acquired, resulting in potentially higher maintenance fees for existing customers. For more information on revenue-per-employee ratios and what they mean in terms of software supplier longevity, please click here. Furthermore, selection teams should ask software vendors if they provide a software acceptance period to validate that the selected solution meets the organization’s requirements that were set forth during the ERP selection process.

While these are just a few of the questions to ask potential software vendors, they are critical to selecting an ERP vendor who can deliver superior software functionality and serve as a technology partner for the organization in the many years following software selection and implementation. For additional information, please visit The TGI Difference.