Enterprise Resource Planning White Papers

Manufacturing in the U.S. is getting tougher all the time and the pressure is unrelenting. To remain competitive, you must continually cut costs, increase productivity and improve quality, while at the same time offering better service, faster delivery and lower prices. Fortunately, there is a tool to help you accomplish all this and more.
Provided by: Global Shop Solutions

Looking for the right ERP package for your small to mid-sized business (SMB) can be a daunting task. Although a fair amount of information is available on the Internet about the actual software packages themselves, there is little advice on how to develop a good, simple strategy to evaluate and choose the right package for your company. This article is intended to provide some of that much-needed guidance.
Provided by: Infor

This NetSuite White Paper explores the business processes underpinning companies that derive their revenue from the provision of services - whether they are standalone service-providing businesses or parts of a larger organization. Key business processes discussed include accelerating sales, tracking projects, improving lead-to-cash and managing professional services accounting.
Provided by: Netsuite

If your critical business data resides in different business systems or spreadsheets and your everyday processes are not disciplined, your business lacks the agility to respond to change. These changes can range from an increase in demand because of a customer's shortened delivery time or several new large orders, to a geographic expansion of your supply chain with global reaches, to changes in trends that require new product introductions.
Provided by: Infor

For process manufacturers like Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals and Food & Beverage, production and inventory control, planning, scheduling, product costing applications improve productivity and reduce costs at production sites throughout the world. For many, however, their applications are either original homegrown systems which fit them to a "T" at the time they were built or discreet based systems lacking core process manufacturing functionality. Because of growth and changing industry requirements, many process manufacturers are coming to the realization that these systems are no longer adequate to support their business objectives.
Provided by: CDC Software

This practical guide links the unique operations of process manufacturing with specific ERP capabilities. The key system requirements, as well as the most common functional gaps, are explained in plain English. Case studies from food and beverage, life sciences, chemicals, and other process industries are included to provide real-world insight into the value of ERP systems designed for process manufacturers and the costs associated with using the wrong systems.
Provided by: CDC Software

This white paper compares and contrasts the two primary alternatives to thin clients-nhanced thin clients that use technologies such as ActiveX, AJAX, and ASP.NET and the new generation of "smart clients"-and examines the differentiating characteristics that could impact your ERP implementation. It concludes that a smart client ERP application is a better solution for most enterprise users, based on performance, usability, total cost of ownership, security, and ease of integration.
Provided by: CDC Software

Better solutions. More software choices. A full range of business services provided by trusted partners with proven expertise and a real grasp of the needs of the industries they serve. These are the keys to achieving tangible business results. These results allow Infor customers in the food and beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries to achieve a higher, faster return on investment through performance-driven improvements, a quicker time to value, and a lower total cost of ownership.
Provided by: Infor

Many businesses have improved market leadership, productivity, and profitability through application of Lean strategies. Maybe your firm-or maybe your competitors. Other companies are still searching for Lean improvement-including firms that have tried (but failed) with Lean as well as those that have yet to see the need for Lean. Between the Lean "haves" and the Lean "have-nots" is a corporate chasm, a performance gap that may mean the difference between success and failure.
Provided by: Infor

Many enterprises have already adopted Software as a Service (SaaS) for non-critical applications-more than three-quarters of U.S. organizations by the end of 2009, according to IDC. Now some are beginning to examine the case for introducing SaaS for core business applications, such as accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Research by Saugatuck Technology with members of the Financial Executives International (FEI) found that SaaS adoption for core financial accounting will rise from 15% of all enterprises in 2008 to 22% in 2010 and 27%-more than one in four-shortly thereafter.
Provided by: Netsuite

It's a grim statistic. Researchers recently found that manufacturers implementing legacy, on-premise Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems face a high likelihood that those implementations will be delayed, that the systems will cost more than estimated, and that the solutions will deliver unsatisfying results.
Provided by: Plex Systems

Finance organizations today face unusual challenges, stemming in part from a world-wide economic downturn. A high degree of uncertainty pervades the economic environment and, at the same time, structural changes are underway that will transform businesses. Whether the recession ends this year or the next, it is clear that there will be new rules for finance to follow, and at the center of these new rules is an increasing requirement for financial transparency.
Provided by: Intacct

Historical dates are divided into years B.C., or before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth and A.D., or anno domini. In this white paper we won't debate the mistakes that the monk Dionysius Exiguus made in arriving at the date of transition between eras, or whether the more neutral terms B.C.E. and C.E. for Before the Common Era and Common Era are preferable. Rather, we will focus on the passing of two other historical landmarks, and their implications for enterprise computing. These two dates are the creation of the Internet and the advent of modern search technology.
Provided by: IFS

As businesses increasingly embrace software as a service (SaaS) to deliver their software applications, it's critical to understand a key differentiator among the many SaaS solutions available: best-of-breed applications versus single vendor application suites.
Provided by: Intacct

Any manufacturer that has a substantial number of shipments from a distribution facility has likely at least considered bringing some degree of automation to their warehouse and shipping functions. For some companies, a full blown warehouse management system (WMS) is almost a necessity, particularly if the operation relies on an automated racking system, perhaps housed in a rack-mounted structure with its own track-mounted materials handling system.
Provided by: IFS

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) products salespeople make a lot of promises, and to listen to them, you might think that simply installing their software on a server and paying their licensing fees is all that is required to realize measurable business benefits.
Provided by: IFS

For most businesses, 2009 presented economic challenges just about all of us simply hadn't seen before, and many companies made the very reasonable choice to limit spending to absolute essentials. But with early signs pointing toward recovery, the reasons to begin investing in your business again are coming back into focus.
Provided by: Exact Software

In this paper we respectfully present our conclusion, namely that some LEAN initiatives can be hugely strengthened with a synergistic ERP implementation and vice versa, whereas in other cases the two efforts should really be viewed as separate initiatives and managed independently from each other. This is, however, not an open ended "it depends on what you want" answer; we conclude that specific LEAN initiatives will eventually fail without considerable attention to specific ERP aspects but that other specific LEAN initiatives and specific ERP functionality have little in common.
Provided by: SYSPRO

While service oriented architecture (SOA) has become a ubiquitous buzzword, the word component - or object - is not used as widely. Yet an effective SOA-based enterprise application relies on the use of well-defined, modular software components. What is a software component? For that matter, what, really, is an SOA?
Provided by: IFS

Periodically throughout history, the world economy changes in drastic, revolutionary ways. These changes are driven by technology, the spread of new ideas and ways of thinking, cultural changes and the gradual accumulation of human experience. Examples of these economic sea changes include the transition from hunter-gatherer economies to agricultural economies, and then later to industrial economies. The industrial age has given way gradually to the information economy. But at this point, all economic sectors are feeling the rise of a new paradigm - the Project Economy.
Provided by: IFS

Anyone even peripherally exposed to business media that touch on enterprise application technology has seen the term service-oriented architecture (SOA) bandied about in advertisements and articles. Major enterprise applications vendors are using the term SOA as a marketing buzzword and are indeed moving their product offerings in directions that deliver the flexibility and total application cost reductions that SOA can offer. But given the central role that SOA is playing in information technology, it is important for professionals involved with specifying and purchasing enterprise applications to get beyond a buzzword level understanding of what SOA is and what it is not.
Provided by: IFS

Like a civil engineering endeavor or sizable construction project, implementing an enterprise-wide application like an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to help run your business is a costly and complex process. And just as would be the case with any significant undertaking, success is not a given. A certain amount of planning, discipline and wisdom are required to complete implementation in a timely manner and to make sure that the new enterprise system put into place meets the requirements of your business.
Provided by: IFS

The maximum output of many manufacturing operations is determined primarily by their market. The company can sell only a percentage of the products that the manufacturing plant can produce. Some manufacturing operations, however, have internal limits or constraints on production that are more restrictive than market forces, and more restrictive than the maximum capacity of the rest of the plant. This may be more common in industries that face seasonality or other types of lumpy demand, where demand peaks at a certain time of year or at a certain point in a business cycle.
Provided by: IFS

A low rumble is emanating from Microsoft about its new .NET initiative. The volume is rising. Have you heard it? You will. .NET (pronounced "Dot Net") will be ringing in our ears by fall 2001 when the first .NET software is officially released and Microsoft brings its marketing machine up to full power.
Provided by: Consona

The release of Microsoft's landmark technology called .NET ("dot net") posed an unprecedented challenge for all ERP companies. While the public has only recently become aware of Microsoft .NET, among ERP software vendors the key strategic decisions about how to apply .NET occurred back in 2000. The direction each vendor has chosen to go in leveraging .NET technology has cast their fate and stands to impact each of their customers on a strategic scale over the next few years.
Provided by: Consona

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) continues to emerge as the dominant technical platform for building next generation business applications. The potential of SOA to transform enterprise software applications has been well documented within leading industry trade publications. This white paper will attempt to cut through the hype surrounding the technology by (1) examining the manufacturing pains that are driving the conversion to service-oriented business applications, (2) breaking down the essence of SOA, (3) focusing on the relevance of SOA as a tool for continuous business process improvement, and (4) comparing and contrasting the Made2Manage SOA product development strategy with that of other ERP vendors.
Provided by: Consona