ERP Providers Serving the Midmarket - Fivetags Consulting LLC.

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Lean manufacturing The concepts of lean manufacturing are not new to midmarket organizations, but the demands and complexities of today’s DDSNs are. These demands have moved lean from just its manufacturing-centric focus to more outside-in-facing constructs, such as demand shaping for promotions and pricing strategies and demand sensing for forecasting. Regardless of the manufacturing methods used by companies, there is the need to expand lean thinking to support better short-term demand visibility and planning, tighter sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes, better supplier collaboration (scheduling, management, and communication), and overall performance management measurements for regulatory compliance and financial management (see “East Meets West—Lean Manufacturing and ERP Are a Better Fit Than You Think”). Several ERP vendors have evolved their lean thinking to support the ongoing focus of lean: • Cincom links lean execution to the ordering and configuration process beyond pure lean manufacturing operations support. This is accomplished through a guided selling front end with its Quote-to-Order product, which contributes efficient demand shaping and sequencing into the actual production environment. Within production, Cincom’s Demand Suite uses visibility into constraints to produce levelloaded production plans and sequences to manage material flows and production execution. Additionally, the Demand Suite is event enabled through Cincom’s .NETbased Environ middleware. This pegs line and order updates to the central planning mechanism to synchronize changes in production to any order changes, eliminating intermediaries in connecting individual manufacturing orders to sales orders. • IQMS relies on a central scheduling mechanism to drive the majority of activities its application EnterpriseIQ supports for small-to-midsize discrete manufacturers. Specifically, the scheduling mechanism is centered on a calculator that, upon order receipt, takes into effect current constraints for labor, raw materials, and work centers to identify if a manufacturer can deliver as promised to the customer demand. It also tethers the output directly to the production schedule. • Oracle’s lean support is in the E-Business Suite and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne products, which are capable of supporting multiple manufacturing styles on a single instance. • Microsoft Business Solutions and SAP have acquired their lean support: eBECS and Factory Logic, respectively. For a more comprehensive overview of how ERP providers support lean manufacturing, please see “Lean Planning and Execution Software: Extending Lean Thinking Across the Enterprise.” 22 © 2007 AMR Research, Inc. ERP Report | 2007 Technology and Vendor Landscape Series
Supply chain management The supply chain arena is where the largest deltas of integrated versus add-on capabilities exist. The demands of the global value chain necessitate that companies migrate from intracompany processes, such as core MRP, warehouse management, and distribution support, to focus on intercompany processes, such as sourcing and procurement, global trade, and transportation management. The following are some success stories: • Infor has arguably assembled through acquisition a massive arsenal of supply chain functionality with which to complement its existing ERP products. For example, ERP products such as Infor ERP LN, Infor ERP LX, and Infor ERP SyteLine provide basic warehouse management functionality integrated with the base product. If customers seek more automated functionality to support complex warehousing scenarios as well as yard management or automated pick-pack-ship pieces, Infor offers a series of warehouse management system and transportation management system add-ons, such as the EXE and Provia products from the SSA acquisition. • Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne product provides sophisticated supply chain planning capabilities, with roots dating back to the Numetrix product, and PeopleSoft 9 has role-based RFI and RFQ functionality. Additionally, as transport costs continue to fluctuate and increased emphasis on inbound and outbound distribution and replenishment continue, we expect the interest in Oracle’s Applications Unlimited will pay the dividends. As interest mounts in the midmarket, Oracle’s acquired supply chain assets will grow, like Oracle Transportation Management (formerly G-Log) and Demantra. In fact, the majority of JD Edwards customers were already using Demantra’s assets prior to Oracle’s acquisition. • QAD’s acquisition of Precision Software provides companies with GTM functionality (multimodal shipping, trade compliance, and international trade management) to complement its demand management and distributed order management modules for inventory optimization and sourcing. • SAP has an extensive library of preconfigured best practices for SCM. It has also enhanced the sourcing and procurement capabilities in the All-in-One product to support scenarios such as commodity parts and mass RFQs. The company also provides capabilities to sort by best price and delivery time. However, more complex processes and functions are needed, such as automatic bidding, optioning, and e-RFQ integration with the SAP supplier relationship management module. • SoftBrands’ FourthShift Edition for SAP Business One tethers sourcing and procurement capabilities directly to its MRP engine for blanket orders. ERP Report | 2007 Technology and Vendor Landscape Series © 2007 AMR Research, Inc. 23
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Page 5 and 6: Defining the midmarket AMR Research
Page 7 and 8: Vendor landscape in transition As o
Page 9 and 10: For example, here’s a list of rec
Page 11 and 12: Table 3a: Breakout of indirect busi
Page 13 and 14: • Companies like Lawson and Oracl
Page 15 and 16: Oracle Oracle’s SMB scope is typi
Page 17 and 18: also provide Microsoft Business Sol
Page 19 and 20: The opportunity for SOA in the midm
Page 21 and 22: • Lawson, with help from design p
Page 23: Consider the following: • For com
Page 27 and 28: Customer management For several ERP
Page 29 and 30: • Infor has good momentum in cros
Page 31 and 32: Recommendations for users It’s a
Page 33 and 34: Table 5: Product offerings examined
Page 35 and 36: Appendix B: Vendor profiles Activan
Page 37 and 38: Epicor Epicor is a midmarket vetera
Page 39 and 40: IQMS IQMS’s main product, Enterpr
Page 41 and 42: Plexus Systems Plexus Systems has b
Page 43 and 44: SoftBrands SoftBrands’ FourthShif

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