Throughout the world, businesses, whether large or small, have recognised the need to plan and manage all the activities of the organisation as one coordinated set of processes. As you know this is the essence of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and at its heart are managing the supply chain (SCM) and managing customer relationships (CRM). Finance`s key role today is to quantify the effects of changes within the ERP, SCM and CRM environments in terms of the businesses efficiency, productivity and overall health. Up to a couple of years ago, ERP systems were seen as primarily benefiting large organisations and as a result the application software was complex and expensive.
However in recent times, it has been recognised that ERP does not only provide immense benefits per se to businesses of all sizes but is an essential component of the extended supply chain and its competitiveness. Amongst the many reasons for this there are three of prime importance. Firstly, the cheap and ubiquitous nature of the Internet along with its simple universally accepted communication standards has enabled corporations to connect their supply chain with those of their suppliers and customers in a single network that optimises costs and opportunities for everyone.
Secondly, the realisation by OEM`s that it is insufficient to solely optimise their supply chain and customer relationship environments but that they need their tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers, at least, to do the same and then integrate the whole through collaboration. Thirdly, because the Internet has created the global marketplace with the customer being in a pivotal position, businesses of all sizes are being forced to streamline their supply chains and improve services levels to customers if they are to remain in business. This becomes of significantly more importance if the intention is to grow market share.
It must be pointed out, however that whilst the above chart is true for the larger corporations, the SME market is in the position of having to catch up fast partly because of having to face global competition even in their traditional markets and partly because of the pressure from their customers. `ERP`, SCM and CRM are becoming critical factors in their I.T. spend with many companies having to address all three to some degree or another at the same time. I have put ERP within inverted commas as the considerable functionality, and hence complexity, is not required to satisfy typical SME business profiles. Another factor is the cost of traditional ERP solutions, not so much in the license fees but in the cost of hardware, cost of implementation and cost of ongoing support.
To meet this demand, there needs to be a new model and ACCPAC is ideally positioned to enter this market by bringing together its own product offerings (i.e. the Advantage suite, WMS, e-CRM) with those of its Manufacturing and Logistics Development Partners, MISys and COSS, into the `ACCPAC Business Suite`. The depth and breadth of functionality within this combined group of applications is ideally suited to the SME market and together with the reputation and large existing global customer base of both ACCPAC, MISys and COSS provides for confidence in product durability and a track record. It not only covers the core functionality of an ERP system but also broadens to cover Sales and Operations Planning, Materials Requirements Planning, Shop Floor Control, Warehouse and Inventory Management (all essential elements of SCM) and a comprehensive CRM package. In addition, being able to extend the functionality of the whole suite to Internet, means that we can meet all the needs of this market.
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