Friday, July 12, 2013

#3


3.   Conduct research on an ERP package, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP or Microsoft Dynamics NAV, for small – to –         medium sized (SME) organizations (between $30m and $ 1b in revenue). Compare that package for available modules, functionality, and so on to the SAP system.

According to Guy Weismantel, director of ERP marketing at Microsoft Dynamics, the company focuses on a couple of areas. The first is the needs of its largest customers, which are mid-sized enterprises and subsidiaries of global organization in key verticals: retail, manufacturing, professional services, public sector and distribution. Next are those customers that desire an ERP solution for improved financials and operations, or who require ERP tailored to a specific market. Business software is often primarily a reactive tool, detecting problems instead of emerging trends, and complexity can slow the ability of companies to make critically needed business process changes, said Weismantel. "Business software should be a critical enabler, facilitating decisions and proactively driving change into practice," he said. "Microsoft Dynamics is committed to a vision of software that fulfills this promise, evolving for a changing world to enable the dynamic business." While, SAP ERP (SAP.com/ERP) is a suite comprising full financials, human resources (HR), operations, procurement, treasury and other business functions. It offers a single technology stack via NetWeaver that supports ERP, CRM, BI, analytics, performance management, governance, risk and compliance, and other elements. The basic idea is to simplify implementation and ongoing maintenance, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO)."SAP's ERP architecture is completely real-time, unlike other vendors who require batch postings to transfer information between interfaced ERP systems," said Himmelberger. "A new feature known as the Switch Framework enables users to implement upgraded business features as needed, without re-implementation or disruptive system maintenance." SAP doesn't focus on any specific verticals. It tends to play well in just about all of them and lists dozens of links to specialized ERP implementations on its site. "SAP's ERP customer base is the largest and broadest in the industry," said Himmelberger. "Recent growth continues to be double-digit, and even higher in emerging economies."





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