It’s my pleasure to announce that another software product within the manufacturing ERP model has been recently certified by TEC. The Process Industry solution for Microsoft Dynamics AX, developed by Edgewater Fullscope, now features the “TEC Certified Product” badge in TEC’s IT Showcase, meaning the software vendor has filled out TEC’s functionality questionnaire and gone through a comprehensive demonstration of the product with TEC analysts, whereafter we were able to confirm that the product fits the process industry vertical and can be used by businesses in food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, and other areas of manufacturing where recipe-based and formula-based processes are extensively used. Read the rest of this entry »

I am quite familiar with the Russian auto industry, and thus I enjoyed analyzing the transaction that recently took place involving a big player in the automobile industry in Russian manufacturing hub Togliatti, whereby automotive industry supplier, Russia-based Saturno-TP, became a client of ERP software vendor QAD (also see yesterday’s TEC blog post).

Despite global industry depression, the automobile manufacturing industry in Russia is developing at an extremely fast pace, only comparable with China and a small number of other Asian countries. All major global auto manufacturers already established their assembly plants in the country three to six years ago, and now it is time for their parts and components suppliers from around the world to roll out their manufacturing facilities in Russia too. Although there is an advantage that comes with being local, Russian auto suppliers are experiencing tremendous pressure from car manufacturers with regards to quality and compliance with world-level standards in manufacturing and logistics business processes. This is quite a painful process overall that is quite well suited to the advantages that ERP software can provide; adopting a world-class ERP system would allow managing a company according to global manufacturing standards of the industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I was kindly invited to attend the Glovia G2 user conference, hosted by Glovia, a subsidiary of Fujitsu, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The event wasn’t particularly large in terms of the number of attendees, so it was quite focused, and Glovia’s management and key people were fully available for questions in a very open and casual manner. I also discovered that many Glovia clients have known each other for quite a while; they meet regularly and have established an informal community around the software product.

Glovia has confirmed its image, in my eyes, of a software company that is open-minded, has a deep understanding of its clients’ businesses, and is highly attentive to customers’ comments, needs, wishes, and suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read an article about the implementation and go-live experience of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution at a relatively small metal-forming manufacturing company called Clips and Clamps Industries (CCI). This Plymouth, Michigan–based family-owned company is a metal stamping supplier to the automotive industry and produces a variety of custom-made items for its industrial customers. The business flow therefore involves many processes for engineer-to-order manufacturing, such as project management, engineering, prototype creation, and so on.

A few specific things about this ERP implementation project caught my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

Software vendor UNIT4 and analyst Cindy Jutras, from the Mint Jutras analyst and research firm, today announced the availability of a new market research report prepared by Mint Jutras on the business impact of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The study is worth reading in itself as it provides detailed data related to ERP usage by real organizations.

This study has been conducted a second time, and it is interesting to see how respondents’ answers have changed since the first study in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

C.W. Thomas, Philadelphia-based manufacturer of vacuum/pressure formed products, and IQMS, vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) software, announced today that they have signed an agreement to implement several IQMS solutions: ERP software EnterpriseIQ and MES offerings that include, among other things, the shop floor control solution ShopData and production monitoring module RealTime.

This packaged solution from a recognized manufacturing software vendor is supposed to replace an archaic DOS-based homegrown system combined with Excel spreadsheets. The existing tool requires many duplicate manual efforts to sustain production and is obviously not fully capable of supporting the business. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC is pleased to announce that Rapid Response Manufacturing (RRM) software from ProfitKey International, a developer of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for manufacturing, has been TEC certified for online evaluation in TEC’s ERP Evaluation Center. An in-depth demonstration of its capabilities was conducted in order to evaluate how RRM holds up to industry benchmarks. We saw the system in real time and assessed its performance on requested tasks and its workflow capabilities. We tried out the system’s navigation along with selected features and functions. Read the rest of this entry »

Providing implementation facilitation tools and instruments has become a common practice for many enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors. I recently wrote about Oracle’s experience in this matter, and I saw the news about Infor today.

Infor has been offering a range of industry-specific predefined configurations of its software packages for some time, and now it’s the turn of the fashion industry. As the vendor announced, Infor Implementation Accelerator is available for the garment and footware designers, manufacturers, and distributors. It is described as a “set of preconfigured industry solutions based on the latest version of the Infor application suites that deliver leading industry practices and business processes.” Read the rest of this entry »

In reading business software news and articles on a daily basis, and in speaking with software vendors, I have noticed that vendors of cloud-based applications, analysts, as well as other professionals have recently begun referring to all solutions other than cloud-based applications as legacy solutions. Here are a few examples of what I have come across:

• Gap Widens between Legacy and Cloud ERP
• Move from Legacy to Cloud (and Keep Your Customers)
• Is the Public Cloud the Best Place for Legacy Applications?

Not convinced about the relevance and appropriateness of such a terminology, I wanted to investigate a bit deeper and understand whether there is a certifiable basis for such a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

SAP is steadily and consistently expanding its SAP HANA–powered business software offerings. As it has been announced at CeBIT 2013, one of the world’s major computer and electronic industry trade shows, in Hanover, Germany, SAP’s Business One version for SAP HANA is now available in restricted shipment mode. Obviously, it will become a commercial version pretty soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Canali, word-famous Italian men’s clothing brand, has selected Microsoft Dynamics AX for its US operations. Business in North America must be going quite well, as the company has decided to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software application that would serve the entire region.

All Canali’s factories are in Italy (and the fact that it has not moved its manufacturing operations to lower-wage countries is worth some respect). Since Canali does not conduct any manufacturing in the US, the software selection case was limited to coordination of distribution channels and retail and wholesale operations. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a new LANSA case study released yesterday that really grabbed my attention. LANSA is a Chicago-based developer and IT services provider that is primarily known for its solutions for legacy systems users who generally want to upgrade their systems but are not ready to shake the entire company up with an implementation of brand new software. Companies may feel that after many years their existing system is tuned to the company’s needs and works like a well-oiled machine, whereas there’s no guarantee a new system would work at the same level. Also, new upgrades and development tools of legacy systems can sometimes be so advanced that making a replacement with a new software is unnecessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations are mainly business projects rather than IT projects, so a lion’s share of efforts and, consequently, costs of ERP adoptions belong to the business side—for example, business process changes and master data preparation. However, ERP systems can’t just be acquired and started to be used overnight, so a system’s deployment itself and its fine tuning to certain business processes and practices is still a significant part of a deal. These processes are often interchangeable so it’s difficult to draw a fine line between system-related or business-related tasks—in some areas we have to change the system setup while in others we optimize processes because the software requires it. Sometimes clients need to modify both in parallel. Read the rest of this entry »

The ability to configure manufacturing products on the fly according to certain customer needs is an essential element of any engineer-to-order, configure-to-order, manufacture-to-order, and assemble-to-order type of manufacturing. There is a class of software applications dedicated to performing the task of transforming customer technical product requirements into customized bills of material, and, sometimes, extending to the creation of sales and manufacturing orders. Such applications—generally called product configuration software, or product configurators—allow users to select options needed based on predefined logic, or create a custom product with new parameters. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. National Retail Federation annual conference began this week, and software vendors in the retail business segment tend to make announcements during this time. Oracle has already released the news of two new retail customers: Australian footware manufacturer and distributor Deckers Outdoors, which owns such brands as UGG and Teva, and one of the largest Russia-based consumer electronics retailers, M.Video. Besides the shared industry vertical, these two companies may not have much in common. Nevertheless, they both have opted for Oracle’s product suite for a number of reasons. Read the rest of this entry »