ERP Software

ERP Software Comparison

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Software systems are applications that integrate a business’ data sources and functions into one information-sharing, unified system. Designed to make possible industry best practices, ERP Software will manage functionality in order to coordinate and synchronize a business’ complete operation.

For a company, the benefits of implementing ERP Software are considered unparalleled. A few of the highlights of ERP software benefits are: savings in time and effort to enter data; ease of ability to generate budgets; improved ability to analyze extensive budget reports; superior ability to measure overall performance. Given that this is true, which software system is best?

In 2008, an ERP Software Comparison completed by Panorama Consulting uncovered a marked preference for ERP Software from Tier I ERP vendors. Close to thirty-five percent of the responding businesses identified SAP ERP as the software systems they used. Twenty-eight percent replied that they used ERP products made by Oracle, while fourteen percent reported their business had chosen Microsoft as the company with the best ERP. Only twenty-three percent of the respondents had selected a product from a Tier II vendor. One of the more interesting findings from this research showed that having selecting a well-known vendor did not guarantee a greater sense of satisfaction with the completed ERP project. That is because the success of an ERP system does not depend on a name brand.

In order to complete a successful ERP Software Comparison it is necessary to first identify what the business requires from an ERP system. In other words, what are the problems the company hopes to solve through the use of ERP?  There are many, quality ERP software systems available today, but not all perform the same procedures in the same way. A comparison of ERP Software evaluates the capabilities of the software and a business that purchases ERP software with either more or less capability than is needed will not be satisfied. The second important thing to identify is the system or systems the business is currently running. It will be crucial for the new ERP to coordinate with the legacy system so that all information does not have to be manually transferred. And, once the number of possible ERP software packages has been limited to just a few selections that will work, the business should contact the vendor in order to ask for a demonstration. Experts believe this ‘in-house’ demonstration will go far towards differentiating the best from the rest.

Written by :

Amy Cruz