ERP Systems

To Upgrade or Not?

Before you consider upgrading your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, determine whether an upgrade is necessary.  If you are missing functionality that is vital to your business processes, and the upgrade contains this functionality, then what are you waiting for?  On the other hand, if you really don’t need the functionality being offered in the upgrade, why do so?  Think about the money it will cost you to implement the upgrade and evaluate the impact the upgrade will have in terms of system down-time. 

Deciding to upgrade or not is a big decision.  If you’ve performed customizations to your existing ERP system, you’ll need to make sure the upgrade won’t wipe them out.  If you have licensed software and it is costing a lot to maintain, perhaps you want to consider changing your ERP system completely.  Forget the upgrade, just move on to a more tangible ERP product.  Of course, not all businesses can simply pick up and move on.  Several of you have invested millions upon millions of dollars in your ERP system that may have taken you years to implement and a few more years to customize.  It’s impossible for you to justify a whole new system.  You’ll have to take many things into consideration when deciding to upgrade or cut your ties and move on.

A very important question to ask yourself is “when will I get a return on my upgrade investment”.  If you don’t see an ROI in the future, then why upgrade.  However, if your ROI is going to be big, the answer is easy.  Get input from your technical and functional people.  Ask them whether they think an upgrade is vital to the success of the company.  In an economy like the one we have today, throwing money around for unnecessary upgrades should be a sin. 

Perhaps you’re in a position where you’ve gotten your ROI on your big ERP on-site dinosaur of a system.  Great, now you can justify moving on.  If you’re in this situation, look at open source ERP systems.  They are free, yes free and contain tons of functionality.  They are easy to customize, have been tested to the hilt, and are all the rage.  You can jump in and try Software as a Service (SaaS) or even a hosted ERP solution.  Take a ride with open source, SaaS, and hosted demos.  The world is your ERP oyster!

Written by :

johnziegler