As you may know, TEC performs all types of system selection projects with clients in which analysts are usually involved to a lesser or greater degree. In collaboration with a client, analysts usually prepare the “to be”—the future system business and technical requirements document, or request for information (RFI)—and make corrections or additions to the template based on the client’s current needs. Often analysts are astonished about the kind of future requirements that users demand—especially the users of early Application System 400 (AS/400). I clearly understand that with that statement, I am at risk of inciting anger in AS/400 system proponents; nevertheless, I cannot keep silent and as such need to share what I have discovered during these projects.

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I hope our readers, to greater or lesser degrees, are familiar with our business software selection methodology—as we have been writing a lot on this matter. But the lion’s share of these publications often refer to either the functional or technical sides of the selection process, or what type of business processes a future system can support and how can be achieved. Read the rest of this entry »

Accountants and business people overall are generally aware that whatever happens in the company must be reflected in the corresponding accounting books or ledgers as accurately and as quickly as possible.

This means that accounting as a business process should be able to obtain, process, and store a significant volume of data that comes from a battery of different sources. I do not believe we need to convince anybody to use a computer-based accounting system to perform those business functions—this has been obvious for quite some time.

That being said, the next questions to ask are these: How adequately does your existing accounting software measure up to reality? And how can you improve it? Read the rest of this entry »

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or similar IT packages have become widely used in businesses of all sizes and types. From my understanding, small and family businesses or companies are the only ones yet to join the mainstream trend of implementing ERP software, although the vast majority of medium and lower-medium-sized companies have already performed an implementation at least once (some of them twice or even more often). But I thought it might be interesting anyway to see how my personal experience and the conclusions I have drawn for myself correlate to implementation issues and business practices in different regions and sizes of businesses. I placed the 5 categories of problems in ascending order based on the degree of “entanglement.”
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In this blog, we want to make readers more familiar with the logic behind our Evaluation Centers on our Web site by categorizing them—and, at the same time, we want to represent our understanding of manufacturing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems classification in general. We did not reinvent the wheel, but we are one of the few companies offering software selection services that provide all the tools you require to find your way to the right ERP for your business needs. All you have to do is to follow our logic, which starts with very simple business processes; but it can get more and more complex, depending on the type of activity you do. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently there were two great articles published on our Website touching the interesting problem of interactions between traditional manufacturing management and project management: The Business Model for the 21st Century Is Project-centric and Weather the Recession with Project ERP. I agree with the respective authors that the project-driven management approach can help companies improve their businesses in any kind of economic situation, whether during a recession or a booming economy. But in this blog post I would like to share some thoughts with you on other aspects of how project management can help manufacturing. Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction to Pronto Software
I’m pleased to say that the certification for the PRONTO-Xi enterprise resource planning (ERP) system has been completed by TEC’s analyst team. Here I’d like to share my impression and some conclusions regarding this system with you.
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