ERP Providers Serving the Midmarket - Fivetags Consulting LLC.

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Within the SCM arena, wholesale distribution has become an intriguing growth area for several midmarket ERP providers. Distributors are in a unique spot to position themselves as providers that small and midsize retailers can work with to take advantage of a highly competitive supply chain. Specifically, distributors can reduce costs through volume purchasing, aggregate supply bases for easier replenishment, increase supply visibility, shorten cycle times and increase turns, execute vendormanaged inventory (VMI) or distributor-managed inventory programs, synchronize replenishment with demand pull signals, and help manage effective new product introductions and promotion execution. However, to truly reinforce a position of value, distributors need to upgrade their systems. Gaining better visibility through an upgrade will allow them to better manage inventory replenishments across their whole networks while communicating effectively with the manufacturer and retailers. Consider the following: • CMS Software merged with XKO Software Ltd in order to link XKO’s wholesale distribution capabilities with CMS’s manufacturing capabilities in both the CMSi5 and CMSm5 products. • Infor’s acquisitions of daly.commerce, NxTrend, and Aperum gave the firm the opportunity to create an entire unit focused solely on the distribution industry. It also created significant cross-selling capabilities for Infor customers in the consumer products (CP) industries that have private-labeling operations, as well as several automotive tier suppliers that also have large aftermarket channels. • Activant’s entire product portfolio focuses exclusively on wholesale distributors and retailers in the lumber, HVAC, automotive aftermarket parts supplier, and industrial equipment industries. Activant’s laser focus on specific industry sub-segments is one of its major differentiators and a major driver of its customer loyalty. For example, its Falcon product is targeted specifically at wholesale and professional lumberyards, and its Vision product is focused on the warehouse-to-store models for retailers in the automotive spare parts aftermarket supply chain. • Microsoft Business Solutions’ Dynamics NAV product provides distributors with integrated financials, inventory management, and customer service functions. It also has a broad channel network behind the product to provide localizations and specific industry functionality. 24 © 2007 AMR Research, Inc. ERP Report | 2007 Technology and Vendor Landscape Series
Customer management For several ERP vendors, customer management represents a significant growth opportunity. Historically, midmarket firms have not made sizeable investments in these capabilities. However, as business models change and companies move from not just making and selling products but also servicing them, there is a need to connect front-end, order, and customer information capture, with back-end processes for order fulfillment and execution. For several vendors, providing customers a unified view of business-critical information across all organizational functions, including sales and marketing, operations, and production, while maintaining stable management of revenue and costs upon order intake is important. Here are some examples: • Oracle is providing integrations for JD Edwards customers to Siebel on demand, in addition to having already extended the core CRM functionality in the EnterpriseOne product to support warranty management and customer service case support. • Microsoft Business Solutions’ Dynamics CRM package is offered alongside the Dynamics ERP packages. It’s integrated with Microsoft Office, which, for many small companies, provides a familiar UI. The Dynamics AX ERP product also has a specific field-services offering that uses Microsoft’s mobile technologies. • SAP is packaging industry-specific CRM functionality as part of the overall best practices offerings used to bring its All-in-One product to market. For example, midmarket firms in the industrial machinery and component industries will receive the Variant Configurator as part of their best practices configuration, while CP companies will see more trade promotions and warranty management capabilities in their best practices bundles. • In addition to SAP, vendors such as Cincom and IFS offer product configurators for highly engineered and complex discrete environments. In a few industrial environments, Cincom’s Sales Configurator, which has a rules-based guided selling engine, is used to augment SAP’s Variant Configurator to handle complex sales, product configurations, and high order volumes. • For Infor ERP customers, the company offers add-on CRM capabilities, including inbound and outbound marketing. It also offers sales and service through the Ironside and Epiphany products acquired from SSA, as well as the ERP packagespecific CRM functionality. ERP Report | 2007 Technology and Vendor Landscape Series © 2007 AMR Research, Inc. 25
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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 and 24: Consider the following: • For com
Page 25: Supply chain management The supply
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

ERP Providers Serving the Midmarket - Fivetags Consulting LLC.

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