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Best of Breed ERP
Small and medium enterprises (SME’s) have limited budgets, resources, and great sensitivity to costs. When SM E’s take the first step into implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration, the most important one of which is cost.
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING
Small and medium enterprises (SME’s) have limited budgets, resources, and great sensitivity to costs. When SM E’s take the first step into implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration, the most important one of which is cost.
There are several costs associated with implementing an ERP as highlighted by Elragal & Haddara (2010). Several ERP system implementation projects fail as they fail to accurately estimate the total cost of successfully implementing an ERP.
This whitepaper describes how one of IMTS’s SME manufacturing client achieved their objective of successfully implementing a Best of Breed ERP at a fraction of the cost of a traditional ERP solution while meeting niche business requirements, enhancing the user experience and providing automated reporting.
IMTS has been a SAP Partner for over 14 years and is an expert at implementing SAP Business One with over 200 Customer locations across 25 countries. The key benefits of SAP Business One include:
- Uniting integral components as standard functionality, including Accounting & Financials, CRM, ERP, Microsoft Integration, Mobile Solutions, MRP, Procurement Management, Production Management, Purchasing Management, Reporting, Sales Management, and Warehouse Management
- Allows for the identification of new sales opportunities, bringing new products to market quickly and providing business-building levels of customer support and
- Features the most powerful proactive business alert system ever developed for small and midsize
IMTS is also a Zoho partner and has successfully deployed the Zoho One across the Industrial Manufacturing, Petrochemicals and Food Processing industries. Key benefits of Zoho one include:
- Low-cost solution for users who need access to limited ERP features
- Out-of-the-box artificial intelligence, business intelligence, and
- Web and mobile apps for sales, marketing, accounting, and everything
The IMTS Best of Breed ERP Solution allows a customer to take advantage of powerful SAP Business one features while benefiting from lower costs associated with Zoho One in an integrated ERP solution with value-added customised reporting and dashboards.
The implementation process at the manufacturing client first began with requirements gathering exercise where an IMTS Business Consultant worked with key contacts including the CEO, CFO, Head of Sales, Head of Operations to map business processes and identify reporting requirements.
Having gathered the stakeholder’s requirements, it was quickly apparent that they had complex and occasionally conflicting business requirements. The requirements gathering process was thus followed by a 3 step requirement rationalisation action plan to eliminate redundant processes, identify business requirements that could be automated using the ERP without user interaction and simplify requirements that could be streamlined to reduce business costs
The best of Breed ERP solution was implemented in phases over 9 weeks to minimise business risk and allow for time for employees to be trained on the new systems and associated processes.
If the client had chosen a traditional SAP Business one solution at its 4 sites , it would have required 40 SAP Business One Standard licenses to run core functions including logistics, CRM, Finance & banking and 5 SAP Business One Professional licenses to access modules including Admin, Finance, Sales, Inventory etc. Typically, a SAP Business one Standard license costs £1350 whereas a SAP Business One Professional license costs £2600 plus 17% annual maintenance fee. The best of breed model reduced the licensing and support and maintenance cost by 40%. The ongoing costs of the solution were reduced further by 30% as the client opted for IMTS’s Cloud solution over an on premise install.
Through the integrated implementation of SAP business one and Zoho as an Intregrated Cloud Solution, IMTS was able to provide the manufacturing business with the benefits and scalability of SAP Business one through limiting SAP Business one licenses to Super Users only. Standard users were offered access to the integrated ERP through Zoho thus substantially reducing licensing costs and providing a simplified interface thus reducing training and support costs. Additionally, the needs for reporting only users were met through automated reporting delivered to their email thus substantially reducing costs associated with providing licenses to these users