Business Software - Small/Medium

[SJP]

A friend of mine is the IT Boss in a medium sized manufacturing company. They have recently moved from a home-grown, bits-and-pieces network to a completely integrated, managed and consistent setup with centralized, backed up, secure servers and proper user authentication etc etc. They are very happy with the new setup, and have decided that this is the right time to replace their in house back office system, currently based on Alpha 5.

The current system does purchasing, inventory management, billing, order tracking and pretty much everything else - and I have no real experience in these sort of systems. If anyone has any information on possible packages or suites, please let me know. They are really looking for something that could grow with them, so probably Oracle or SQL Server backend. Predominantly a Windows environment, but that isn't a concrete thing.

Thanks !!!

 

[LeonardMack]

Great Plains (Dynamics) by Microsoft is one such solution.

 

[wsuffa]

How to handle this is a function of company size. If greater than $100 m or so, and growing, it's worth it to do a requirements analysis and send out an RFP to the major companies. With appropriate cooperation amongst the departments, you probably don't need a consultant to define requirements (implementation is a different matter).

I've seen a couple of these through the process, leading a Lawson implementation and approving/oversight of a Peoplesoft system (prior to Oracle acquisition). Other options include Oracle, MAS and Great Plains. You really do want to do a needs analysis - when I last looked MAS seems to have a better set of modules for inventory/manufacturing companies but wasn't so good for "services" based companies, Peoplesoft couldn't handle real estate assets well. Etc. Etc.

Figure out what you need, then find a system to fit, as opposed to vice-versa.

 

[mikea]

Figure out what you need, then find a system to fit, as opposed to vice-versa.

Wha?? Geez, Bill, I thought you were a professional.








He says, thinking how every project is "I know how to use a hammer. Who are you to be telling me I need screws."

 

[SJP]

Wha?? Geez, Bill, I thought you were a professional.








He says, thinking how every project is "I know how to use a hammer. Who are you to be telling me I need screws."

LOL - yeah, we've had this discussion - I'm pushing them through the Requirements gathering right now, I'm just trying to get some basic possibilites in my head so we can then start filtering them by the requirements.

They have come a very long way in a very short time, and really understand the benefits of doing this the right way, and on the right timeline, rather than just picking something and throwing it in over a weekend and hoping it will work.....thats how they ended up with Alpha 5

 

[ggroves]

Several years back, my company bought a smaller company that used a package for middle tier manufacturing companies called Fourth Shift:

http://www.fs.com/

As head of IT, I reviewed their implementation of it in preparation for integrating them into our systems, network, etc. For a company of their size (about $20 mil), it worked well. We opted not to touch it, and simply push and pull necessary feeds between systems via interfaces. Of course, it depends on what your definition of "medium sized" is. I would suggest that he start out looking at some of the smaller players in the market before heading down the dark, ugly road of Tier 1 players like SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle, etc.

Greg
182RG

 

[EdFred]

Great Plains (Dynamics) by Microsoft is one such solution.

A partial solution. When I looked at (not so) Great Plains it would not do what we needed it to do, and we are only a small distribution company. For 1/20th the cost, I paid my friend to build the skeleton for our system in Access. (Waits for Kent, Jesse, Chuck, and Mike to groan about Access - ok, now that they are done...)

I've run it for 9 years with no issues, and I have yet to run into anything I can't make it do. I am not suggesting Access for Steve's company, although if Great Plains can't even do what my small company needs it to do, I am not sure why it would work for a larger company.

I would never suggest Mediocre Plains to anyone based on what I got for what I was going to pay and there were some things it could just not do.

 

[wsuffa]

Wha?? Geez, Bill, I thought you were a professional.








He says, thinking how every project is "I know how to use a hammer. Who are you to be telling me I need screws."

The question is what kind of professional

 

[LeonardMack]

A partial solution. When I looked at (not so) Great Plains it would not do what we needed it to do, and we are only a small distribution company. For 1/20th the cost, I paid my friend to build the skeleton for our system in Access. (Waits for Kent, Jesse, Chuck, and Mike to groan about Access - ok, now that they are done...)

I've run it for 9 years with no issues, and I have yet to run into anything I can't make it do. I am not suggesting Access for Steve's company, although if Great Plains can't even do what my small company needs it to do, I am not sure why it would work for a larger company.

I would never suggest Mediocre Plains to anyone based on what I got for what I was going to pay and there were some things it could just not do.

Great plains has made some great improvments over the last year or two. Although, no software package can ever fit a companies needs exactly, unles syou build a custom package, you need to find something comes close.

I can't beleive anything in Access would run better than anything based off of a SQL database! I would love to see something built to the complexity of Great Plains and capable of having dozens of users in it at once running on Access!

I'd be interested to hear exactly what Great Plains did so bad that you didn't like it.

My company has been using Great Plains for about 6 years now and we are pretty happy with it. Five years ago, some things were frustrating in it, but with last years update, things are so much better!

 

[EdFred]

Well, we do only have at most 5 users logged into it. I have it do everything but payroll - and that's only because I don't feel like updating the data tables! Of course, having worked with it for 9 years, I can't think of much I can't make it do. Everything is tied together so I only need to do single input. I can't remember exactly what Great Plains couldn't do at the time, I just remember saying, "Wait a second, for $40,000 it won't even do this?!?!?" And it was something ridiculously simple. Most likely had to do with some sort of product reporting or inventory.

 

[mikea]

Well, we do only have at most 5 users logged into it. I have it do everything but payroll - and that's only because I don't feel like updating the data tables! Of course, having worked with it for 9 years, I can't think of much I can't make it do. Everything is tied together so I only need to do single input. I can't remember exactly what Great Plains couldn't do at the time, I just remember saying, "Wait a second, for $40,000 it won't even do this?!?!?" And it was something ridiculously simple. Most likely had to do with some sort of product reporting or inventory.

Ed, I'm sure you know better than I do, but my only caveat with using Access is to make sure you really do only have 5 users and are very careful about simultaneous writes. The jet DB engine can be overwhelmed and do bad things to your data. I'm sure like all things MS, it's a lot better now than it was in the past.

AFAIK, using ODBC you can swap in a SQL Server (or. better, Oracle) database when the need arises.

I know. If you wanted my opinion...

 

[rpadula]

The question is what kind of professional

You know, the only difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional gets paid.


-Rich