Page 45 - MetalForming August 2014

Trends in
ERP Converge
Our survey of manufacturers finds that we can expect executives to become more engaged and demand more from the data that has been sitting dormant and underutilized for years. The result is better visibility, fewer surprises and more proactive rather than reactive management.
BY CINDY JUTRAS
In 2013 you couldn’t pick up a mag- azine without being bombarded with what manufacturing-industry observers were calling the “big trends” in enterprise software. We heard that cloud and software as a service (SaaS) deployments would take over, and about the prevalence of mobile devices and the resulting consumerization of IT. “Social” took on new meaning as Facebook, Twitter and other social- media phenomena not only changed the way we communicate but also impacted our business applications. And then we welcomed “big data,” ana- lytics and in-memory computing.
Now, based on our recent industry survey, we see the convergence of these trends in enterprise resource planning (ERP), brought together by a common goal of making not only innovation, but ERP itself inherently easier to consume.
Innovation that’s Easier to Consume
Even as ERP software vendors have accelerated the introduction of inno- vations, upgrades can prove costly and
Cindy Jutras is president, Mint Jutras, LLC, Windham, NH: 603/434-9688; www.mintjutras.com.
Fig. 1
disruptive leaving companies woeful- ly behind in consuming enhancements. For those truly interested in making progress in 2014 and beyond that must change.
More and more vendors are com- ponentizing new features and func- tions and delivering them as “loosely coupled,” allowing customers to keep existing solutions in place while adding new functions and even replacing exist- ing, embedded features. This doesn’t mean a loose collection of separate applications causing integration headaches. The vast majority of com- panies using ERP prefer a single inte-
grated suite from a single vendor, although many will be cautious before sacrificing functional requirements for ease of integration, or a single vendor (Fig. 1).
The footprint of the solutions pro- vided by ERP vendors has steadily increased, blurring the boundaries and making it difficult to distinguish between integrated ERP modules and separate applications.
Additional (noncore) modules once had limited feature sets, making the trade-off between functionality and seamless integration. Now, embedded extended functionality can easily rival,
Preference is High for an Integrated Suite
Deep and/or specialized functionality provides us with a competitive advantage. We will not sacrifice for cost or ease of integration
While an integrated end-to-end solution is our preference, we will be cautious before sacrificing functional requirements for ease of integration or a single vendor
Overriding preference for a complete, fully integrated end-to-end solution supported by a single vendor
0%
12%
25%
25%
All Respondents
63%
50% 75%
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