Introduction When forecasting applications were first developed external to the ERP system, a narrow spectrum of applications was developed for demand planning, and these were primarily designed for the statistical forecasting process. However, statistical forecasting is only one of several forecasting processes, and over the years, the variety of demand planning applications has increased significantly….
Introduction Something very interesting is happening in the space for stand-alone financial systems. And that is that even the most significant buyers now have superior solutions available to them outside of ERP system financials. This is a fact but is still little known among enterprise software buyers, most who still adhere to the incorrect notion…
Introduction What is commonly referred to, as PLM is one of the most confusing areas of enterprise software. Given the limited published information available on the bill of materials (BOM), one initially wonders where decision makers are getting their information about how to intelligently manage the this essential master data object. Some History on Terminology…
Introduction Production planning and scheduling software have many more software vendors listed for it in some sources that we think qualify for the title. This is because many ERP vendors say that they can perform production scheduling when in truth most ERP systems provide functionality which is just good enough to impress executives during the…
Introduction Supply planning uses the methods of MRP, DRP, heuristics, allocation, and optimization (both cost and inventory) to make the recommendations of what, when and how much to bring material into the supply network. And also the what, when, and how much to move material between the locations of the supply network, and in some…
Introduction CRM is the fastest growing software categories in enterprise software. CRM has been forecasted by Forbes to surpass ERP in revenues by the year 2017. If that occurs, that will be a fantastic accomplishment as this is the first time that any other category of enterprise software has even come close to ERP sales…
Introduction Business intelligence or BI was initially meant to mean the applications that could be accessed by business users. However, the term has morphed into a catchall term that covers a variety of technologies, which include reporting, OLAP, analytics, data mining, among others. The BI field is filled with different techniques and subdivisions, which makes…
Introduction Business intelligence or BI was initially meant to mean the applications that could be accessed by business users. However, the term has morphed into a catchall term which covers a variety of technologies which include reporting, OLAP, analytics, data mining, among others. The BI field is filled with different technologies and subdivisions, which makes…
Executive Summary This is the Honest Vendor Rating for SAP. SAP ranks as one of our lowest-rated vendors in topics ranging from SAP’s sales tactics to their value. Introduction SAP is the world’s largest enterprise software company. However, as a company, like the most significant consumer software company in the world, Microsoft, SAP lives in…
Gartner and the Magic Quadrant: A Guide for Buyers, Vendors and Investors This book chronicles possibly the most interesting story of the past several decades in the enterprise software space: the lack of evidence for the benefits of ERP systems. Yes, the most popular and widely purchased application in enterprise software had a series of…