ERP Manufacturing

Manufacturing ERP Software, Tucson

Tucson, Arizona is a mid-sized city located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix, close to the United States border with Mexico. It is the 32nd largest city in the US with a wild west history and strong foundation of rugged outdoor independent enterprises. Ranching was once a mainstay here, as were railroads, and since the establishment of the University of Arizona in 1885, the city of Tucson has produced some of the greatest poets and writers in the country. It may be hard to see a clear link between these activities and manufacturing ERP software. Tucson may have produced some beautiful desert sunrises and plenty of poets and cowboys to appreciate them, but what about factories and integrated manufacturing software systems?

In the earliest days of manufacturing ERP software, Tucson businesses were as susceptible as any other to the lure of an integrated platform that could allow all departments to run the same applications and share databases housed on the same server architecture. With manufacturing ERP software, Tucson assembly plants and factories (there were several) could schedule the delivery of raw materials to the shop floor and coordinate the tracking and distribution of finished products. But the real influx of Manufacturing ERP software into Tucson happened when businesses in general saw how the unification of software functionalities would increase the efficiency of their enterprises.  During the approach of the new millennium, businesses and other organizations in Tucson like universities and government offices all caught ERP fever and were willing to pay a high price to run standardized applications for accounting, payroll, human resources and other software business tools. Almost all large organizations that stood to benefit from ERP software in Tucson had their own systems in place by 2005.

At that point, small businesses and start-ups had begin to see the difference an ERP system could make in terms of efficiency and functionality.  But even though the returns on implementation investments seemed promising, most small businesses a few years ago did not have the budget flexibility to implement and maintain their own ERP server architectures. At this point, the ERP landscape is beginning to change in Tucson and elsewhere as large vendors and providers take an increased interest in meeting small business needs. This means they need to customized and scale down their products to meet tighter budgets, but they seem willing to do so in order to compete for small business market share. This presents a challenge that may change the nature of the ERP provider market, but if vendors can meet the challenge and small businesses can find take advantage of the offerings or find alternatives like hosting services, both may stay competitive as the economy recovers from the current downturn. 

Written by :

tracey boxer