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.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wondered why every time you hear a story about an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation failure, the vendor gets the blame? The customers did everything they could to avoid it, but the vendors either provided inappropriate training and support, or simply a poor quality product.

Frankly, I do not think that an ERP implementation failure can possibly happen without at least some contribution from the customer. As a customer, no matter what the vendor does to influence you during the selection process, the final decision is yours and you have to make sure you make the right one.

Here’s a list of things a customer should consider before selecting an ERP—both during the implementation and even long after. I have selected 13, because ERP selection and implementation has nothing to do with luck.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a TEC research analyst, I get to see a lot of really interesting (and some not so interesting) stuff when it comes to enterprise software and the like. With technology changing at the speed of light, there’s always something new that I haven’t seen before, that grabs my attention and makes me say “Wow, that’s cool”!

Like this past week for instance. I had a product briefing with a company called Saba to get an overview of their learning management solution (LMS). I was fortunate enough to have Kenyatta Berry (Saba’s Director of Product Marketing) speak with my colleagues (TEC’s team of analysts) and I to show us Saba’s suite of enterprise software offerings. Along with that we received an overview of the company and its unique strategies for training its clients on how to use its software.   

This leads me back to my opening remark about ”something I haven’t seen before”; that something is called Saba University.

Read the rest of this entry »