What makes an ERP, an ERP?

It seems to me that the acronym ERP is as much of a catchall for describing a mish-mash of cohabitating business applications as the term “dude” is a common way for saying hello.


If you don’t believe me, try asking any owner-operator of a small business or a CEO to describe their systems environment. It turns out any sort of a dog’s breakfast of accumulated products, bolt-ons and cling-ons (or "hairballs" as Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson refers to them) will suffice for an ERP. No wonder the promise of an ERP system for many companies has dramatically missed expectations. It seems many of us cannot even agree on what an ERP system is.


So what is it? Well, the term ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, and it exists when a single database contains all of the data required to support multiple core business applications.


For starters, this usually includes Sales, Financials, Operations and Human Resources. Most current day ERPs include a Data Warehouse to support business analytics as well.


Traditionally ERP systems were something available to only the large enterprise businesses due to the high price tag associated with licenses, infrastructure, implementation and ongoing maintenance.


With the emergence of SaaS alternatives, ERP is now available via the cloud and provides a cost effective alternative for the small to mid-sized customer that works just as well as the big boys' on prem ERP.


Thanks for reading.


Dave Rice, TrueCloud CEO


http://www.truecloud.com.

Saas Applications – Where have you been hiding?

It occurred to me the other day, now that I’ve had a chance to discover that there is indeed life after 35 years in the multi-billion dollar corporate structure for a CIO, that I was my doing myself and probably my former employer a disservice by not investigating the Software as a Service (SaaS) phenomenon more completely before now.

It just didn’t seem that important when the Chief People Officer dropped by my office some months ago to ask if I would have any objection to him looking into Success Factors (a Human Resources SaaS product) while he waited for my multi year SAP upgrade which included HR to complete. “I need something to tide me over,” he said. “This product seems like it will meet our basic needs, it’s affordable and it won’t require much in the way of IT resources to implement.”

Fine with me, I remember thinking, that’s one less thing I’m going to worry about today. And besides if these SaaS alternatives can take some of the pressure off by eliminating a spot application or two and at the same time keep my executive colleagues satisfied, so much the better because I’ve got much bigger fish to fry.

Since then, I’ve discovered that there is a great deal more to be said about SaaS alternatives than that these days, especially if you happen to be a small or a mid-sized business looking for a way to avoid the costly proposition associated with on-premises solutions.

SaaS solutions won’t require an increased investment in expensive infrastructure or dedicated IT staff resources. The product upgrade and implementation cycles are considerably less time consuming and risky. SaaS solutions are ubiquitous and available close to 24/7, whereas on-premises solutions usually require systems to be recycled.

Most importantly, SaaS solutions are no longer merely spot applications. There are now SaaS ERP offerings that can support entire businesses from Sales to Finance, Inventory Management to Human Resources.

If you are an owner-operator of a small or mid-sized business, it’s time to take a serious look at the emerging SaaS ERP alternatives.

This promise of operating serious business applications “in the cloud” has, at long last, reached an appropriate level of maturity and the clear advantages over on-premises solutions will be too had to ignore much longer.


Thanks for reading.


Dave Rice, TrueCloud CEO


http://www.truecloud.com.