Conventional wisdom is that some systems that require low latency and a high degree of system availability, such as warehouse management systems (WMS) or manufacturing execution systems (MES), are best deployed on-premises. Nevertheless, cloud systems are invading even this category of software. This post highlights one example.
March 19th, 2020 Los Angeles, Calif–Avasant, a leading management consulting firm today announced its acquisition of Strativa®. Founded in 2000, Strativa serves clients in the selection, price comparison, and procurement of technology solutions. The acquisition will expand Avasant’s data warehouse of IT vendor and product information, further enhancing Avasant’s consulting offerings, which include vendor selection […]
When does the relationship between two tech vendors look like a merger but is not actually a merger? For all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what just happened with two players in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) industry, Acumatica and IFS. This post outlines the deal and what it means for buyers and customers of Acumatica and IFS.
One of the key advantages of modern cloud systems is that they often come with rapid development platforms (Platform as a Service, or PaaS) that allow the vendor, partners, and even customers to build extensions and customizations to the system without affecting the underlying code or architecture of the base system. However, as with so many good things in life, PaaS can be used and abused. This post outlines the risk in overreliance on a SaaS vendor’s PaaS.
In selecting and implementing a new enterprise system, business leaders have learned the importance of evaluating business processes. However, they often think that this means they should begin with detailed process mapping of their existing processes. We propose a better way: Begin with an exercise we call business process framing. In this post we provide a definition of process framing, explain the differences between process framing and process mapping, and outline the benefits of beginning with process framing before moving on, selectively, to process mapping.
The traditional advice given to companies is that it is best to standardize on a commercial software vendor for the core of the applications portfolio. Nevertheless, we are now seeing some clients push back against this advice and developing more of their own software in-house.
In this post, we trace the history of the commercial software industry and why the buyers in some cases are rebelling. We conclude by offering new guidelines on when to choose custom development over packaged solutions.
One of the great challenges facing traditional ERP vendors is getting customers to keep up with the latest version. Cloud ERP systems are supposed to solve this problem, by making the vendor responsible for upgrades and keeping all customers on a single version. However, sometimes, even SaaS providers need to make changes that are so significant and potentially disruptive that customers resist the change. This post describes how one such cloud ERP provider is meeting this challenge.
In enterprise technology, digital transformation is a hot topic. But what does it really mean? This post provides a simple definition of digital transformation, breaks down the main types of digital transformation, and recommends an approach for developing a digital transformation strategy.
With so much having changed since CRM systems were introduced in the 1990s, is it time to rethink CRM? This post outlines six ways in which CRM systems must change to meet the needs of today’s businesses. But, only time will tell if software vendors will be able to meet these needs or whether, once again, they will over-design and over-price their CRM offerings.
Microsoft is attempting an ambitious plan to converge a wide swath of business tools under one unified umbrella called Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a platform that serves as the successor to its Dynamics NAV ERP system. According to Microsoft, it will be offered in the cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid deployments. This post provides an overview of what to expect–and not expect–with the release of Business Central in October 2018.