We Blog ERP

NetSuite has done a good job of establishing their reputation as the go-to cloud-ERP providers, and last week they announced a plan to help more businesses enjoy cloud-based ERP platforms, dubbed the NetSuite SP100 Program. With a new channel sales program that includes a 100% margin offer, NetSuite is allowing channel businesses to easily migrate their current business models to the cloud.

NetSuite makes no bones about wanting to the model for VARs and solution providers, and SP100 will allow those parties to receive commissions not only for new sales, but also for customer renewals. And while NetSuite has long been at the forefront of the SaaS-ERP game, the SP100 Program is an aggressive challenge to their major competitors (Microsoft, SAP, Sage, etc.), who are slowly but surely bringing more cloud offerings to their ERP stables. And it’s definitely a smart move on NetSuite’s part, to enable the value-added resellers (VARs) whose revenues are declining because they primarily offer legacy ERP systems.

The idea seems to be that those ERP providers offering legacy solutions must bring in cloud components in order to compete with NetSuite, and NetSuite seems to assume that the competition can’t quickly produce cloud-ERP solutions that are as polished—and they might not be wrong. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how those other ERP heavyweights respond, but more than that, it’s good to see a major push to bring ERP platforms into the future and proliferate enterprise cloud services.

Technorati Tags: NetSuite, SaaS ERP, VARs

News about SAP implementations in the UK has been coming steadily, and for the most part it has been promising.

Of note, Premier Foods implemented an SAP system in 2006, and is reportedly pleased with how the platform is helping them improve processes. Premier Foods’ goal was to seamlessly integrate the front and back offices, and almost four years into their implementation SAP is working well to that end. From now until 2012, Premier Foods is planning to use the solution to streamline and cut costs for back office operations. Premier, which produces Hovis bread and Mr. Kipling apple pies (among other food items), stated they already had a pretty lean back office, and that with SAP they’re hoping to reduce the number of duplications.

The other SAP-UK news item from this week describes an SAP partner implementing SAP financials for United Stationers, to help manage distribution and product lists. All in all, the news is not much for a company like SAP—a software giant with many implementations globally, but it is a good sign. Given the recent departure of Leo Apotheker and the company’s subsequent return to the co-CEO model—and of course the barrage of bad press they received for steep prices and slow implementations—it’s definitely good to hear customers singing SAP’s praises.

When it comes to a company of SAP’s size and stature, making guesses as to the effect of certain problems is tricky. SAP’s products may seem outdated, but to see a company satisfied with a 6-year deployment process does suggest that SAP isn’t doing everything wrong.

Technorati Tags: SAP

Late last week, NetSuite announced their fourth quarter earnings, and their overall success in 2009 is undoubtedly a harbinger of widespread SaaS ERP uptake within the next few years. And if those numbers weren’t enough, they also announced that RedBuilt LLC switched to their product from SAP—NetSuite has successfully poached SAP customers before, but RedBuilt is the largest one yet.

NetSuite’s annual revenue was up 9% and Q4 revenues were at a record $43 million. Their sales increased as on-premise vendors experienced downward sales trends. SAP’s SaaS sales went up marginally, but their overall software revenues were down 27%, and their biggest boost came from the increase in support sales—typically SAP’s biggest source of income—which increased 11%. Oracle’s numbers fall somewhere in between.

So SaaS sales are on the up and up, but on-premise ERP products are not slipping entirely into obscurity. SAP’s Business Objects line does very well, despite the heavy fire they’ve endured for less effective cloud offerings. Still, RedBuilt’s switch to NetSuite is a good sign for SaaS ERP delivery. RedBuilt is an innovator and supplier of engineered wood products for the commercial and multi-family construction industry, and they’ve switched to NetSuite for managing their corporate offices and four production plants, and perhaps most importantly, the NetSuite deployment means RedBuilt no longer has to pay the $275,000 annual salary costs for SAP and database administration.

NetSuite certainly offers a very complete SaaS ERP package, as do other companies, but the SaaS deployment’s biggest coup so far is its cost, which explains why on-premise ERP is not extinct, and will probably take longer than expected to die out. When SaaS ERP packages are more extensive, then we’ll really begin to see some change.

Technorati Tags: Netsuite ERP, Oracle ERP, SaaS ERP, SAP ERP

Last week, Oracle launched a new version of their Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Release 2.5 PPM Process Integration Packs (PIPs), which integrates project management and ERP.

The new offering is called Project Portfolio Management Integration Pack, and it connects Primavera P6 with E-Business Suite. In addition to integrating project management data, the new integrator also connects Oracle ERP users to invaluable financial information. It also allows them to synchronize information regardless of which platform houses the project information.

There is also a PPM Integration Pack for Primavera P6 and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, which facilitates the integration of timesheets between the two platforms.

According the press release, the project management PIPs in Oracle AIA Release 2.5 will help project managers and accounting teams to join their business objectives. One of the best things about the new integrator is that it is a standards-based method for companies to integrate their processes across both Oracle and third-party applications.

It’s nice to see a big ERP play bridging the gap between ERP and project management, and hopefully other companies will follow suit.

Technorati Tags: Application Integration Architecture Release 2.5, Business Process Integration, Oracle ERP, Project Portfolio Management

ClickSoftware is positioned as a service optimization provider rather than an ERP company, but their latest innovation could foreshadow some progressive improvements in the ERP market. The company recently released a standalone mobility suite that aims to close the gap between the back offices and the employees in the field.

ClickSoftware has offered mobile capabilities in their ServiceOptimizatoin Suite for a couple years, but the company decided to offer the detached mobile suite due to the heightened interest in mobility they saw among their customers. Mobility Suite will connect the back-office with the field representatives through mobile workflows, optimized routing, real-time inventory data, time and attendance recording, and more. Interestingly, ClickSoftware noted that while many people prefer to get mobile platforms from a vendor they’re using for CRM, they found plenty of people looking elsewhere for those capabilities, and their seizing the opportunity to land and expand.

William McNeill of AMR Research (who evidently partnered with ClickSoftware on the development of Mobility Suite) told CRM Magazine that the product is about “getting to where technicians are, what they’re doing, the parts they’re using,” and ultimately helping them make the best decisions efficiently. Mobility Suite also offers a jumpstart on billing processes that might previously have taken weeks to fulfill. McNeill states that this expedited turnaround with curry favor with customers who’ll be able to explain billing to their CFOs within a number of days.

Ultimately, ClickSoftware’s Mobility Suite isn’t entirely a standalone product, because it does rely on information from desktop databases, but it’s a smart offering and it bodes well for the ERP market, which has been stuck in the on-premise past. It’ll be interesting to see if their offering a mobile component does in fact increase business.

Technorati Tags: ClickSoftware, ClickSoftware Mobility Suite, mobile ERP

Australian ERP company Pronto recently bested SAP, winning the business of the Australian branch of Freeworld Coatings, a global specialized coatings company. The Australian arm of the company recently underwent a restructuring phase, and they used Pronto’s PRONTO-Xi to consolidate their IT platform and replace the various legacy systems employed about the Australian operations.

The company’s operations manager, Joseph Eid, noted that after they took over the coatings division of Bristol paint manufacturer Barloworld, they were in need of a “robust ERP solution” that was also flexible and could facilitate the structural overhaul. They vetted several ERP solutions, including SAP—an undisputed ERP heavyweight—but found PRONTO-Xi to be the most flexible and customizable. The PRONTO-Xi deployment supports financial, manufacturing, and CRM data, and the Freeworld is also happy with the platform’s multi-currency capability.

Eid said Freeworld’s Pronto implementation time was also the quickest offered, and operations were streamlined within 3 months—which was a good time period for a rebuilding phase, but also enough time for the end users to become familiar with the product. The speedy deployment is due in part to Pronto Hosted Services (PHS), which is the Pronto SaaS model Freeworld chose to deploy alongside PRONTO-Xi.

This is not the first time SAP’s services have been passed up for a sleeker SaaS model—earlier this month, they lost an actual customer to NetSuite’s OneWorld, which runs on their SuiteCloud. It’s certainly been a rough year for the company, and the release of their Business ByDesign is surely not coming soon enough.

Technorati Tags: NetSute OneWorld, Pronto ERP, PRONTO-Xi, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP ERP

This week, Best Line Oil announced they will implement VAI’s S2K Enterprise for Distribution ERP solution to streamline business operations. Best Line Oil distributes Shell Lubricants in the Southeast US, and their Florida business partner, MCS Business Technologies, will also be deploying VAI’s S2K solution.

Implementation of S2K began in September of this year, and the system will go live January 2010. S2K will provide a unified platform through which management can view real-time business operations. One of the reasons Best Line Oil chose S2K was for its customer support capabilities, one of their regional managers noted. S2K has intuitive software that analyzes data to calculate best prices—through analysis of buying trends—for certain customers, which is a timesaver for Best Line Oil’s accounting department. Best Line was also impressed with the Enterprise for Distribution’s solutions for managing supply chains and customer relationships.

For all their clout in the ERP market, SAP has had some trouble recently, mostly due to their plans to increase maintenance and licensing fees and their current lack of a general cloud-based solution. ERP-Link Corporation uses SAP’s situation to their advantage, creating SAP-Microsoft interoperability solutions; most recently, they released iNet.Invoices, a Dynamic Business Application allowing SAP users to optimize and automate invoice management for a lower cost.

With iNet.Invoices, companies running SAP for Accounts Payable and Logistics can run automated invoice management by leveraging Microsoft SharePoint Server, which provides rich document management, and workflow and Office interfaces. More specifically, the application verifies information in real-time about vendors, orders, and goods received against a user’s SAP system, and through SharePoint they can engage the information through Office apps.

iNet.Invoices optimizes at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions, which is a timely offering given the state of the economy, but also considering SAP’s current pricing. Business ByDesign, their SaaS offering, won’t be generally available until next year, and in the meantime, their on-premise products (which are already more costly by nature) are about to see rising prices.

Technorati Tags: ERP-Link, iNet.Invoices, Microsoft SharePoint Server, SAP, SAP for Accounts Payable and Logistics

Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP may never have the enterprise-market potential touted by SAP and Oracle, but the company is aiming to dominate the small- to medium-sized business market.

Microsoft doesn’t break down revenue reports from its Dynamics line by segment, but Ray Wang, a partner at the Altimeter Group analyst firm, estimates that Dynamics ERP brings in between $1.1-$1.2 billion per year. Dynamics EMEA’s director of ERP field marketing, Phil Battersby, calls the midmarket their “sweet spot,” and states that Microsoft isn’t trying to poach enterprise customers from SAP and Oracle. Battersby acknowledges that those companies have been giants in that market for a while, and now Microsoft wants to carve its niche in the SMB space.

According to Computer World, there is plenty of room for Microsoft in the SMB market. For one, many midsize companies are looking for on-demand replacements for legacy systems. In addition, smaller companies who are expanding will likely be looking for unified ERP systems, and here Microsoft Dynamics ERP has an advantage: their user interface closely resembles that of the MS Office Suite applications these businesses are likely already using for business management.

Another factor boosting sales in Dynamics ERP: it’s done entirely through a partner system, where partners polish the system for local sales. This locality also adds a personal touch that is apt for dealing with SMBs. Of the partner system, Battersby also noted that it helps Dynamics ERP expand into more verticals.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Dynamics ERP, Oracle ERP, SAP ERP, SMBs

Last month, Plex Systems announced added enhancements in supplier quality management. The company provides ERP solutions for manufacturers, and these new, streamlined improvements will allow users to engage suppliers in ongoing improvements and operational efficiencies.

Now users of Plex Online, which is an integrated SaaS ERP solution, can permit anyone in their supply chain limited access to the Engineering Change Request system, which allows them to submit chain requests, share resulting savings, and alter specifications and processes. The idea behind this update is to help manufacturers boost productivity while cutting costs in product development cycles.

The supplier management functionality also has new supplier scorecards with expanded drill-down capabilities.  More specifically, there is a new capacity for calculating scores for “parent” and “child” suppliers and for individual businesses. There is also a function for defining multiple formulas for metric and target ranges in various metric groups. These scorecards have been improved for user-friendliness with color-coding for readability, as a means of simplifying the system so managers across the system can easily pull data.

Technorati Tags: Plex Systems, Supplier Quality Management