ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

The emergence of the Internet, evolving customer demands, pressure to accelerate business process, and the need to establish more collaborative relationships with key suppliers and business partners are all pushing organizations towards ERP solution. So, what is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is described as an "information system package that integrates information and information based processes within and across functional areas in an organization" [1].

Traditional stand-alone applications were designed for specific customers, with limited functionality, and isolated from other applications. On the contrary, ERP is a business tool that integrates all the applications required by an organization as a whole, and connects the organization to other enterprises in a network form. It is usually compromised of several modules such as: a financial module, a distribution module, or a production module. Today, ERP have added new functions such as supply chain management, product data management, electronic commerce and warehouse management. Thus, ERP opens a window of opportunity for businesses to compete globally, respond to competitive pressures, and increase revenue.

ERP Characteristics & Basic Operations:

ERP facilitates company-wide Integrated Information System covering all functional areas like Manufacturing, Selling and distribution, Payables, Receivables, Inventory, Accounts, Human resources, Purchases etc.

- ERP performs core business activities and increases customer service satisfaction.

- ERP facilitates information flow across different sections or departments of the organisation.

- ERP bridges the gap between business partners allowing ongoing collaboration.

- ERP is a good solution for better project management.

- ERP is built as open system architecture, meaning it allows automatic introduction of the latest technologies such as: Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Internet, Intranet, Video conferencing, E-Commerce etc.

- ERP not only addresses the current requirements of the company but also provides the opportunity of continually improving and refining business processes.

- ERP provides business intelligence tools like Decision Support Systems (DSS), Executive Information System (EIS), Reporting, Data Mining and Early Warning Systems (Robots) for enabling people to make better decisions and thus improve their business processes.

- ERP tracks a wide range of events in an organisation, and plans for future activities based on these events.

Quote-to-order: A Newcomer Causes a Stir in the Market

The first part of this series provided a detailed background of the still-evolving quote-to-order (Q2O) space, including historical examples to show why the market is increasingly demand driven. Part one summed up by making general observations as to how Q2O software solution vendors have addressed the market, and about the additional features and functionalities they will need to incorporate as demand shifts.

Now it's time to take a look at one of those high-flying "newcomer" providers: enter BigMachines, Inc. (www.bigmachines.com), a rapidly growing company founded in 1999, and with North American headquarters (HQ) in Chicago, Illinois (US), and European HQ in Frankfurt, Germany. The vendor also offers global customer support and hosting operations with a technology center in San Mateo, California (US), a West Coast data center in San Francisco, California (US), an East Coast data center in Sterling, Virginia (US), and an Asian research and development (R&D) center in Hyderabad, India.

According to the BigMachines Web site and associated press releases, the vendor is a provider of on-demand configurator, quoting, and proposal software and associated professional services. Its clients are in the high tech, industrial equipment, medical instruments, and software and services industries. The company's solutions help its clients' sales teams and channels to streamline their selling processes from customer inquiry-to-order. The BigMachines solution digitizes complex selling processes and captures an organization's tribal knowledge. By doing so, it provides online product selection, configurator, quoting, and ordering capabilities for new products and aftermarket parts, and streamlines configuration, pricing, quoting, proposal generation, and order management. BigMachines' rapidly growing customer base of over 100 corporations includes global leaders such as Kodak GCG, Siemens, Ingersoll Rand, and NTT Communications, as well as innovative growth companies such as ShoreTel and Aruba Networks.

Getting Cozy with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Powers

BigMachines' Lean Front-end (LFE) solution provides reporting capabilities that help analyze sales activities, and integrates to existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), computer-aided drawing (CAD), and CRM systems, including those from Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM OnDemand, Oracle, and SAP.

For Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM OnDemand customers, BigMachines offers two different product editions: SPP (standing for selection, pricing, proposal) and CPP (standing for configuration, pricing, proposal). The SPP is an entry-level solution that does not include the configurator module. Both solutions enable users to streamline their entire Q2O processes, all within the familiar Salesforce.com CRM interface.

The CPP and SPP product pricing capability includes BigMachines' certified and packaged integration to these two CRM products above. The vendor also offers Professional and Enterprise editions which have different price points, minimum numbers of users, bundles of other BigMachines modules, and other add-on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) software. All of these product editions are part of the umbrella BigMachines solution.

Professional Services Automation: Affordable Hosted Solutions for the Small to Medium Business Market

The dot-com age of the mid-nineties introduced the application hosting model to the business world. Thus, a plethora of companies offering a wide range of software as a service (SaaS) typically offered hosted legacy customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, allowing many to join the Internet revolution. Unfortunately with the sudden burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001, the application services provider (ASP) business model never really had a chance to prove its worth to the business world. Only in the last couple of years have we seen software giants like Salesforce.com prove that the ASP model can work. Banking on the recent momentum of this model, a number of professional services automation (PSA) solutions have built business models on ASP technology.

For professional services organizations (PSOs) that have limited resources and limited information technology (IT) infrastructures, the ASP model represents an attractive offering. Smaller PSOs may benefit from the quick deployment and affordable initial price point provided by hosted PSA solutions. In addition, increased security measures have ensured the critical protection of sensitive data within these organizations. Consequently, a niche group of PSA vendors have emerged to serve PSOs in the small to medium business (SMB) market.