The software industry has no shortage of three-letter acronyms, so let’s get right to answering the question. CPQ stands for configure, price, quote. More specifically, CPQ is a category of software that helps enable the business processes of configuring, pricing, and quoting a product or service.
An ERP implementation in the manufacturing industry typically consists of two companies—the company that provides implementation services and the company that procures them—working together to successfully bring the ERP implementation live.
For any project to be successful, it requires a leader, and an ERP implementation is no different. Projects involve people who take on roles, responsibilities, tasks, and decisions. They are a true team, and everyone’s actions (or inactions) affect the team and project. The ERP Project Manager (or ERP Implementation Manager) is the leader of this team, and is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the implementation.
A cloud ERP implementation requires the same elements as an on-premise implementation from a methodology perspective, but not from a technical perspective. The difference lies in the level of responsibility.
The upside of buying enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is the economy of scale. Since it is written for the masses and not customized for one company, the cost per user plummets. For example, Microsoft Office certainly costs more to develop than the few hundred dollars it costs to license. One of the other upsides is that thousands of users create a robust community that quickly flushes out weaknesses in functionality, helping the software become stronger. The downside is that the ERP may not be totally in sync with the company’s culture, and that’s when most people start to think about ERP integrations. To give an instance, what some may call a production order, the ERP may refer to as a work order. Some of the ERP system’s screens may be laid out differently than what the company would have preferred. Or maybe the processes the software supports are not in total alignment with the company’s current processes.
The process to evaluate and choose an ERP software is not a simple task; as a matter of fact, it is a complex task. Because of the risk and cost, it’s a big decision for a company, big or small, to find and implement an ERP. I have numerous conversations with companies that are going through this selection process, and if they don’t bring up the subject of cost in our first conversation, then I do because it is so important! To help you set a realistic budget for your new ERP system, read below for a list of costs you should plan for.
All ERP solutions have a database, which is where all the information is stored. This is important information, like customers, vendors, parts, costs, balances, and so on.
ERP data migration is a big step in the implementation process that is critical to get right. The ERP system will not function at optimal levels otherwise. Smaller start-up companies typically have less data to convert than larger businesses that have been around for decades, but data migration takes place in all implementations. So, what is it? In simple terms, it is getting the information out of the old system and putting it in the new system.
The term ERP security generally refers to two different things. The first is the security at the ERP user level inside the system itself. The second is the security of the ERP data as it relates to external threats (i.e., hackers) that want to access the system. I am going to focus on the second item in this blog.
Most people have heard of a mission statement, but a vision statement is typically less well known. While there is some overlap, there is a distinct difference between the two. To put it simply, a mission statement describes what a company is doing to achieve its goals today, and a vision statement describes what a company wants to achieve in the future.
