Sage are making a concerted effort to raise their profile in the mid-market after several years maintaining a low profile. This is great news from our perspective and for our Sage mid-market customers. One prong of their marketing is to raise thought-provoking concepts via the industry’s leading website – The Register. Read by many IT technicians, The Register is a great place to garner feedback which is exactly what Sage have achieved so far.
This week’s missive strikes a number of important chords. Firstly that if you have a ’90s generation ERP system then you’ve probably got a lot of bespoke development that could be removed by upgrading to a modern, flexible ERP platform and, secondly, that it’s a very good idea to take a look at the standard functionality in a modern ERP system and consider whether you could adopt that functionality rather than bespoking the system to match your processes. They make the very valid point that most modern ERP systems adopt best practice and you’re more likely to benefit from adhering to best practice than you are bending the system to match your own processes. Most companies gain little differentiation from adopting unique operating procedures in most areas. There may be some areas where you do gain some advantage from your processes and these areas are often best served with an industry-specific module that integrates with the core ERP system in a hub and spoke model rather than trying to meet all of your needs in one system.
These are key tenets of Panacea’s approach to ERP solutions and it’s good to see Sage raising awareness of these strategies. In fact, combining these strategies with Microsoft’s xRM startegy whereby a CRM platform is used to meet the needs of more tailored processes, you have a modern, flexible and affordable systems strategy.
You can read more here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/22/challenging_accepted_erp_wisdom/
Tags: ERP, finance, market, mid, Sage, strategy, The Register, upgrade, xRM
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