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„A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” is a proverb well-known. In B2B, this concept is translated by an ERP solution is only as strong as its weakest integration. Commonly overlooked and underestimated, integration is one of the most important factors to consider as part of a best of office application vs. integrated ERP solution. The benefit of richer functionality is limited by partial integration.

Therefore, to take an informed decision regarding best of office application vs. integrated ERP, you must know this:

- Integrating a best of office application with ERP software will result in additional cost and maintenance (ex. dual upgrade and maintenance cycle).

- Developing integration between a best of breed application and ERP software will not be as robust as the delivered ERP integrations between its applications. Part of result has to do with the total integration cost over the life of ERP and the other area is the simple fact that the underlying data models are different.

Knowing the facts expressed above, the question I challenge you with is: will having a best of breed application versus integrated ERP worth the cost? Will the additional investment generate a significant impact to competitive advantage?

The new version of the open source ERP / CRM application SocrateOpen just said „Hello world!” The 2.6 version cames with a series of new improvements and adaptabilities coming to support companies activating in services, construction, telecommunications, distribution, discrete manufacturing and agro.

During my years of industrial marketing and sales, I learned that there is a big difference between corporate information and Strategic Knowledge.

In today’s business world, human resource outsourcing (HRO) is becoming increasingly popular than it was few years ago. This dramatic change occurring in today’s organizations has propelled this latest trend toward outsourcing. Workers’ needs are changing, human resources costs are rising and there are increasing pressures to be aware with the latest legislative changes.
At this point, you may be asking yourself a question: how to efficiently manage the all this? The answer is simple. By partnering with a firm that can deliver an HR IT solution that can empower your managers to make healthy workforce decisions.
To find the right answer to „To outsource or not the HR”, you must answering to those questions:
- What HR outsourcing model do I need? (business process, shared services or an application?
- Do I really need an outsourcing?
- What are the benefits and concerns of outsourcing?
And, before making the decision, there are some high-level factors that must be considered:
- Ensure the outsourcing firms you are looking at have enough experience to handle your company’s needs and that they will be able to meet or exceed your quality expectations.
- Ask for references.
- Have open communication with your provider.
- Understand your provider's limitations by asking the right questions.
Having the answers to all those questions, you will be able to take the right decision: outsource or not the Human Resources.

From six different studies we conclude that approximately only 5% of employees use BI tools to perform Analytics effectively^*.

I think this is in part related to the fact that except for folks with backgrounds in science, engineering, economics or finance; most people across the company do not feel too comfortable around numbers, math or logic. I've seen this during many years of training corporate employees on the strategic use of Business Intelligence and Analytics.

The traceability is an important component of the requirements imposed to food industry by the European Union. And means the need of controlling the history of a meat product, from raw material until the final product and its location after sale or distribution. In other words, by traceability the manufacturing process conforms to the European legislation and quality standards.

What this means? For example, when a contamination occurs, the meat manufacturer will have to remove its entire production from the market. And that because the identification of compromised lots will not be possible in the absence of a solution able to store all information related to raw materials entered in their composition. For any producer who wish to increase profit, its essential to be able to track the raw materials sources, the processing of those materials, the products lots on batch, the returns and losses.

For this reason, the purchasing of an IT system has become a essential condition for Romanian meat producers and processors to fulfill both EU requirements and increase profit. Unfortunately, most Romanian meat producers do not buy whole systems of production management activities, do not implement an ERP solution, but only a few modules which do not concern automation.

According to a marketing research performed by students at Economics and Business Administration Faculty from Babeş Bolyai University, only 48% from the Romanian companies bought a software to control the production process and other 19% took into consideration adoption of software solutions for traceability reasons. 33 procents of romanian meat producers not have budget for such an investment, not heard from the existence of such software or failed to identify on the market a software that meet their business needs.

In such conditions, the question I ask is: will be able the Romanian meat producers and processors to face competition and to comply with traceability rules without purchasing any IT systems for production chain management?

Even in the case of extremely small businesses, a strategic deployment of a Business Intelligence solution can have major impact on the growth and profitability of the company. Having a clear view of the profitable customers, products, regions and market segments is fundamental to understand the causes and expand upon the successes. Equally important is to find those customers, brands, markets, segments and competitors responsible for draining cash and quickly stop the bleeding.
- Should we treat all customers equally? (If you say yes, I’d suggest reading “Angel Customers & Demon Customers”)
In a company that has more than thirty customers, the Pareto Principle will be evident. Looking inside the famous 80/20 rule one can find that five percent of the customers generate close to 50% of the profits while the bottom 50% of the customers generate only 5% of the total profit. Many companies have a hard time identifying which customers belong to each group. A strategic deployment of Business Analytics provides the answers instantly.
Even when sales revenue is growing, management should be able to ask key questions and find the answers right away, so the train of thought isn’t interrupted:
- Is revenue growing profitably? Where? How and Why?
- Are we paying sales reps commissions for bringing in unprofitable tonnage?
- Can we quickly tell whether the growth trend is just over last month, last quarter, same quarter last year or year to date?
- How about the profit growth of the last 52 weeks compared to the previous 52 weeks? Is it really growing?
- Is our growth accelerating or decelerating? How much?
- How is our profit growth versus budget or business plan? Where is it failing to meet objectives? Why?
- Which competitors are threatening our business?
- In what regions and market segments can we maximize our growth?
A BI solution is fundamental to find answers to the seven layers of WHY's in order to get to the root cause of issues. Being able to understand and correct these issues faster than the competition provides the company a competitive advantage regardless of how small the business is. In the past deploying a BI solution was not affordable by small companies, not only due to licensing cost but also because the internal and external resources needed for set-up and maintenance.

Finding the right ERP software for your business is, sometimes, a very difficult process. Why that?
In the first place, because the analysis of your company needs are not complete.
Second, cause your expectations are a little bit unrealistic.
To simplify the entire process of finding the right ERP for your company, you must follow those 5 steps:
1. Set clear objectives implementation, acceptance criteria and, especially, your business requirements;
2. Awareness of technological change impact that will occur on the company processes, with direct influence over each employee work.
3. Check the market share and reputation of the vendors, its expertise in your field.
4. Check the supplier's ability to provide help in the reorganization of your business processes.
5. Ask for recommendations from other users of the ERP solution you want to implement.
After that, the whole process will appear much simpler and easier.

For any manufacturer and supplier of integrated management systems, the launch of an ERP solution is not an endpoint, but rather a new beginning. Because any such solution requires, over time, updating, correlation with legislation changes and functional adaptations designed to help users to improve / control / optimize businesses as much as possible.