Two Next-gen technology approches for ERP

In an effort to rid the term ERP even SAP is digressing away from the term they are credited of creating.  New IDC research shows that SMB organizations do not have the agility to compensate for their quickly changing business environments a main ERP problem from the old monolithic suites. 


The next-gen ERP products being created as we speak are addressing these concerns and are being adopted by customers with less vendor interaction after the sale.  These next-gen platforms allows organizations quickly create new processes, reconfigure and tweak existing processes that may have changed.  


By speaking with our customers lately, one of things they are looking for is the ability for the system to include agility based on business practices.  This has gained more prominence in the last several months as SaaS vendors , applications and services become more available. 


There are several approaches to take when evaluating agility in software applications.  Mentioned below are a couple that you may find useful. 

• PaaS - Platform as a Service - this allows you to build your ERP by creating a common SOA  platform that allows you to add applications built on that platform by either the same vendor or several different vendors.  Usually integration is a little more difficult but with vendors using the preset API's provided by the platform creators makes it it a little more simple to employ.  An issue that may become apparent using this approach is the different vendors that support each task or module is there a common support practices strategy ?   Examples of this are Force.com, Amazon, Zoho.com etc. 

• SOA by vendor - this usually consists of a vendor providing the platform and configuring its software as you require.  This is the more common approach now as vendors have started to deploy this methodology as well.   Most vendors provide you with the modules and functionality you require and as you need more from them to enhance functionality they "turn on" the rest of what is required.  This provides a little easier implementation path and allows the organization a quicker approach to utilize the new functionality when switched on.

We are also looking for feedback on what the new term that describes the entire enterprise software environment within a company moving away from the term ERP ?  Any thoughts can be emailed to info@eval-source.com