ERP Blog

Your One Stop Guide To Manufacturing Accounting Software

A good number of ERP software implementations are focused around manufacturing. Although Manufacturing ERP is one of the more complex implementations, a company stands to have significant ROI gains due to improved management of inventory and work-in-process.

The following article touches on some of the points to consider when implementing for a manufacturing firm. It points to one solution at the summary. This is not the best way to go (ie. looking at a specific target software), you need to focus on the software solutions that best satisfy your requirements. Requirements first, software second.

Your One Stop Guide To Manufacturing Accounting Software
Ashish Jain

Manufacturing in simple terms means changing of raw materials into final goods, ready for selling. Different processing methods and equipments are used in this transformation. So, how do you manage all these processes?

Definitely, you can take the help of a manufacturing accounting software. Manufacturing Accounting Software is developed with a view to achieve the various financial needs related to production. It is full of various functional modules assigned for different tasks. Accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger and much more are the essential modules of an efficient manufacturing software.

No matter what your business is, no matter whether it is big or small, you are bound to face some of the critical business challenges. Some of the basic challenges of a business related to manufacturing like constant optimization of inventories, processing and fulfilling of customer orders in a timely manner have to be tackled in an efficient way while keeping a firm grasp on the financial aspects of the company.

And here the great role of manufacturing accounting software comes into picture and enables you to face the challenges of your business set up. To define manufacturing software, it is an application used in the management and inventory field. Management and control of any organization has never been so easy.

A manufacturing software enables you to handle everything associated with production very easily. Management of manufacturing involves four main steps- estimating, producing, accounting and reviewing. And, with manufacturing software, all these become very easy. A manufacturing software is very helpful in entering different plans electronically and monitoring their process regularly. It also helps in tracking the assets of a company which is a crucial part.

Manufacturing software is great in the sense that it can easily link the product demand with the production ability of a company. It helps in the optimization of resource usage. It is great in forecasting future trends as well. Features such as sales forecasting, contact management, analysis and alike help in the effective management of the organization.

There are several manufacturing accounting software which you will find beneficial to your particular industry. Some of the manufacturing software solutions have developed manufacturing- specific solutions for different product lines. Manufacturing business requires that when the demand hits, it must be able to deliver. This software provides you the required tools to keep production running smoothly and efficiently, including powerful inventory management tools, job costing tools and much more.

One such excellent manufacturing accounting software is developed by Sage software to meet the unique accounting needs of the manufacturers. The name of the software is Peachtree Premium Accounting for Manufacturing. It encompasses key data and tools to assist you in fulfilling important jobs, quickly and easily. Other features of the software are manufacturing guide, pre-built reports, work tickets and quantity price breaks giving accurate inventory control and making you aware of the operational insight into your production and assembly processes. Above all, starting up and learning this software is very easy.

The software supports core accounting features and reporting options. It helps you in keeping track of:

a) Accounts Receivable
b) Time, Billing and Job Costing
c) General Ledger
d) Inventory
e) Accounts Payable
f) Payroll Solutions
g) Fixed Assets

Peachtree Premium Accounting software thus makes it possible for you to conquer the challenges of operating a profitable manufacturing business. It gives you a powerful yet flexible tool, designed specifically to help you meet challenges of your manufacturing operations. This software is known for its sound inventory and assembly management features. All these make this software, the choice of millions of small businesses. I strongly recommend you this software for at least once in your business. And I’m sure that you will be hooked.
Ashish Jain
To get more information about accounting, accounting software and types of acconting software visit http://www.managemyaccounting.com/

Lists of ERP Vendors

Please comment if you know of other vendor lists.

ERP Ecosystems

As a follow up to the previous post, here is an interesting article regarding how ERP applications are now becoming ERP Ecosystems. Turning the application into the platform…

ERP Ecosystems

‘ERP ecosystems allow customers to get the best of both worlds, because
best-of-breed applications are increasingly certified for one or several ERP
platforms. These emerging ecosystems will be an important factor driving the
market forward,’ said Bo Lykkegaard, program
manager of IDC’s European Enterprise Applications service. ‘Niche
vendors, which are acquired and integrated into large application suites, will
also accelerate the demand for such application suites.’
Full article found at: http://www.irishdev.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=4847

ERP Outlook by Microsoft

In reading this article on MS and ERP, the question came up “Is Microsoft really going after the smaller companies with their Dynamics ERP offerings?” So far all of the indications are that they are targeting SAP and Oracle as their competition. Is this a little arrogant of Microsoft, trying to compete against the established Tier 1 vendors in ERP? Oh… Yeah… they’re Microsoft. The same company that went after Lotus 123, Netscape, Word Perfect, and others. Find a niche that uses software, exploit it with the fact that MS software runs well on MS Windows, it has a familiar look and feel to it, and give it away for free or market the hell out of it.

So far that is not what has happened with Dynamics, but it is still early. What has happened so far is that they have completed wave 1 of their project Green integration. They have built a common user interface for all the Dynamics products (AX-Axapta, NV-Navision, GP-Great Plains, SL-Solomon). They have also built common database tools. Now Mr. Gates is outlining a future with CRM and Dynamics that integrates to the “Live” tools on the web, including MS CRM integration to the Live website for targeted advertising. Add to that that 2007 Office is going to have intimate linkages into and from Dynamics. The user interface is MS Outlook. Based on MS CRM, which essentially now plugs into Outlook, Dynamics will soon do the same. So you will have a single, familiar Desktop tool for managing Email, Customer Relationships, and Enterprise Data. All with the familiar Microsoft look and feel plus links into Microsoft Live.

Sounds irresistable for a midsized company who wants simplicity and flexibility. However, now your entire enterprise is dependent upon a single vendor for the Back Office (servers and database), Front Office tools (MS Office), and your enterprise data.

Further, as it stands right now, Microsoft is taking a familiar approach of providing a development platform for partners to extend. In Dynamics, the code is flexible with many MS partners building niche add-ins to the products. As we understand it, the core product of Dynamics works fine, but doesn’t drill to deep into any industry. The Microsoft Industry Builder addresses that by having MS VARS (Value Added Resellers) become specialists into certain industries and then developing the vertical software necessary on top of the Dynamics product. Yes, it is integrated and native, being built with the Dynamics tool set. Yes, it is supported. If anything happens to the VAR, then as long as it is a Microsoft certified Industry Builder solution, you get the Microsoft support for that vertical extension.

So is SAP and Oracle out of reach? Based on history, no they are not. And based on history, they should be preparing for a real fight.

ERP Definition

MySQL disclaims interest in the ERP market

In the ERP world, there are three database platforms that ERP software companies focus around: Oracle, MS SQL, and Progress. The up and coming database in the Open Source world is MySQL. According the the linked article, Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL has spoken up about his database and ERP, essentially saying that SAP will run MySQL.

It is interesting that most open source ERP applications are using Oracle or Postgresql. Compeire and TinyERP for example use these databases, but not MySQL. They for some reason have chosen not to go that route. So if SAP is getting behind MySQL, it will be interesting to see how that will change the market of ERP, especially open source ERP systems.

DBMS2 — DataBase Management System Services»Blog Archive » MySQL disclaims interest in the ERP market

Search your Oracle E-Business Suite data using Google

ERP and web search combined? What a powerful combination. Imagine being able to google data right from your ERP software! The possibilities of its applications are mind boggling. Google is the number one search engine for all things web. Now they are moving into book searches and as this article indicates it will soon be parsing your ERP data. Google is now teaming up to gather data from within Oracle’s E-business suite. It also mentions salesforce.com’s CRM product. This is probably just the beginning of possible linkages.

Follow this link to the article < Eddie Awad's Blog

Theory H.O.W.: How Organizations could Work

We recently saw a presentation by Howard Cavallaro on the various types of manufacturing companies and how they interact with their supply chain. It was a very good presentation. He now has a new book out called: Theory H.O.W.: How Organizations Could Work
icon that we thought you should know about.
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The publisher’s description is as follows: Theory H.O.W. was written to enable small and medium-size manufacturing companies who want to aggressively challenge the status quo. With more than 40 years of combined experience in manufacturing, supply-chain, and business management, authors Carol Ptak and Harold Cavallaro have developed applicable theories about how to run a successful company. Using the Theory H.O.W. business transformation approach, organizations will be able to formulate strategies that are supported by specific tactical actions, systems, technology, and other tools to achieve a desired, sustainable competitive advantage. The backbone behind the Theory H.O.W. process is actually a combination of key elements–the ability to classify, define, or characterize key business elements and their effects on business performance and your organizations ability to produce greater results.

We are awaiting our copy, but we would suggest that based on the presentation, the book is worth reading!

SAP vs. Oracle

Here is an interesting comparison between the two leaders in the ERP space, SAP vs. Oracle. This is a hotly contested debate between the two giants in Enterprise Resource Planning Software. A company that is considering moving to an ERP will likely have one or both competing for their business.

They have distinctly different approaches to both the software business and to their software architecture. Once only for the Fortune 500, the mid-sized marketplace is looking more frequently at these software offerings. This is due to the consolidation of ERP software offerings, post 9/11, and due to the increased focus that SAP and Oracle have placed on this mid-market space.


SAP vs. Oracle
Alisher Muhammadiev

Both ERP rivals Oracle and SAP are different as their products

Enterprise Resource Planning system was designed and implemented in more than 20 different industries and all ERP companies together generate every year a $60 billion dollars profit on the global market. The biggest part of this pie is shared by two software giants Oracle and SAP. Although they compete on the same market and target their products for common industries, they have very distinguished strategies, corporate culture and distinctive offers.

Information Technology has become an important part of any current business. The Enterprise Resource Planning system is a software package that was specially designed to help companies to run their businesses better. It consists of many modules. Each of the modules is used at different departments within one corporation. All those modules are interconnected with each other in one coherent system. According to the common definition of ERP – it is a system that processes all transactions in an organization and facilitates the planning, production and customer responses. It represents the companys culture. Moreover it can be thought of as the companys backbone coded into the software. That is why the ERP is so important and at the same time very expensive. Depending on the size of the project some companies spends from $2 to $130 million dollars for ERP implementation. Building an ERP package requires a lot of time and resources. ERP vendors develop, supply, and implement the ERP system as package software for enterprises. Some companies are loyal to one vendor and use all modules from same vendor. Others decide to mix together compatible modules from different vendors. This approach is called a best of breed system. When the vendors product is built in-house all work including software development, implementation, customers support and training are done by the vendor alone with no help from the outside or from outsourcing.

The world second-largest software supplier Oracle was founded in 1977 in the United States and by 1999 the company was serving 5000 clients in over 140 countries. Oracle is well known for their database systems rather than enterprise resource planning system. It is rating as the second ERP package vendor after SAP on the ERP market. Oracle has a reputation as a company with strong software support, a large financial budget and stable position among the competitors. At the same time the corporate culture of Oracle is conservative on benefits from revenues. Which causes such problems as inflexibility and slow implementation of their ERP products. In other words, the company lacks partners and consultants for technical expertise.

Hence the main player on ERP market is the German company SAP (Systems, Application, and Products in Data processing) which was founded in 1972. It was the first time in software history that a company outside of the United States had gained such success. In 1999 SAP had more than twice as many customers as Oracle in 100 countries around the world. Unlike Oracle, SAP decided to work in close collaboration with many other companies. The companys success derives from the fact that SAP invests 20 percent of the profit on research and shares 80 percent of the total revenues with their alliance partners. Moreover, SAP has many consultants who provide help and training to their customers. And there are even third party developers who supply a large number of add-in programs that can work together with SAPs products. As a result, customers enjoy more flexible and fast implementation of their ERP systems. There is no doubt about why SAP became a leader.

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Because Oracle products are built in-house in contrast to SAPs solutions they are based on one database system. Oracle became popular as a manufacturer of developing products that can be easily integrated with other models from other vendors, enabling them to build a best of breed system. The ERP packages from Oracle are based on three main parts: Supply, Demand and Finance with several included modules. Oracle offers a strong enterprise system that is able to accommodate more than 1000 users whereas the ERP package from SAP can be scaled from 25 to 1000 users. Such scalability is possible because of the high granularity of the SAP modules. The downside of the SAPs ERP systems is that the SAP vendor forces its customers to change or adapt their corporate culture to match how SAP software works. However as SAP as Oracle, both provide incredible enterprise resource planning systems which help many companies to operate more efficiently and more effectively these days.

Both vendors offer great ERP packages but choosing the right package among both is not an easy job. For SAP, being a leader on the market it does not always mean that SAP can offer the right software that customers want to have; and Oracle can appear as a good alternative for this case. If the company is limited in resources and restrained in time the best solution would be to go for SAP products. However the company with distinguished values which creates a competitive advantage would prefer to choose the Oracle to build a unique system that will fit well to their businesses. The lesson is that before moving to ERP the senior manager needs to balance all constraints and needs for the companys future.

Alisher Muhammadiev Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea tel: +82-10-2304-0074 email: so***@*********ac.kr web site: http://puzzleservice.com

sap vs. oracle

sap vs. oracle