News & Views

January 2012 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Anyone who has been involved in selecting software knows the road is strewn with pitfalls — many of which we covered in “The top 10 software selection mistakes” (www.camagazine.com/selectionmistakes). But how do you avoid those mistakes altogether? In the next few columns, we hope to shed some light on the subject…”

October 10, 2011 from CPA Practice Advisor – “As with most organizations, nonprofits vary in size and scope, and their software needs vary, as well. As an accounting professional, you know that the software needs of the local animal shelter will vary widely than the needs of the United Way.

While this may be a drastic comparison, it really highlights the wide range of organizations served by nonprofit software vendors. Entry-level, off-the-shelf systems are intended for different types of nonprofits than the top-line, robust solutions. This is not a one-size-fits-all market… The review includes the following systems with their ratings:

• AccuFund – AccuFund Accounting Suite for Non-Profits (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• Blackbaud – The Financial Edge (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Blackbaud – Fundware (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Cougar Mountain Software – Denali Fund+ Accounting (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• CYMA Systems, Inc. – CYMA Not-for-Profit Fund Accounting (Overall: 4.75 Stars)
• eTEK International Inc. – eTEK Fundamentals (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Fund E-Z Development Corp. – Fund E-Z Accounting (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Intuit Inc. – QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit Edition (Overall: 4.5 Stars)
• Sage North America – Sage Fund Accounting (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Sage Peachtree Premium Accounting for Nonprofits 2012 (Overall: 5 Stars)
• Serenic Software – Serenic Navigator (Overall: 5 Stars)”

180 View – Although all the systems have a high rating and the rating seems somewhat arbitrary, the article should benefit a not-for-profit organization seeking a new system. However there are many more systems available. For example, check out Unit4 and Tyler Technologies, both of which are good high-end solutions.  You will also find that many of the well known ERP systems have either built not-for-profit functionality or have partners that have extended their system with not-for-profit functionality using the same tools and database as the core product.

December 2011 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Few complex projects are undertaken without some estimating being done. Whether it’s a construction company that needs to do a custom project or an accounting firm that needs to prepare a proposal for a complex audit engagement, someone (often several people) will have to take a stab at calculating the effort and cost required to finish the job…”

September 26, 2011 from ganntead,com – “..It’s therefore slightly surprising to me just how bad some RFP responses are. When I see a response that so dramatically misses the mark of what is asked for, it doesn’t just exclude the vendor from consideration for that contract, it raises doubts about the quality of their work in general…”

180 View – We send out a lot of RFPs and most of the time, the responses are done well. Today I was involved in a lengthy discussion with one vendor about their response to the requirements. We use a sliding scale – the higher the number, the better the fit. For example “7” means out-of-the box functionality or the requirement is fully addressed in the standard system. The vendor’s perspective was that if the tools they used allow for configuring the system to meet requirements without writing code, then it’s out-of-the-box. We had some challenging requirements that I knew were more complicated than just adding a few fields. I told the vendor I did not believe them but was prepared to let them do a demonstration to show their solution. I also told them it would not be pretty if they failed to demonstrate the so-called out-of-the-box functionality. The vendor in question is one for which I have respect and therefore I must be objective.

August 2011 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Buying an ERP system is a lot like buying a house. The process brings all kinds of unexpected costs. When I moved into my first home, we couldn’t get the bed up the stairs, so we had to remove part of the ceiling, which ruined the fresh paint. Then the plumbing failed and most of the pipes had to be replaced. If only we had known…”

June 28, 2011 from Manufacturing AUTOMATION – “Canadian manufacturers and distributors are increasingly turning to ERP to help them improve their fortunes, especially in the face of low-cost foreign competition and the high Canadian dollar. Many hope that ERP – or enterprise resource planning – software will help them become more efficient, productive and profitable. Unfortunately, too many companies learn that the path to ERP-driven value is more like a labyrinth.

Together with Manufacturing AUTOMATION, we surveyed 74 Canadian manufacturers and distributors with the goal of uncovering common, key drivers of ERP success. We defined ERP success relative to implementation, because a solid implementation is the launching point of ERP-driven value. To meet our definition of success, an ERP implementation must have been delivered on time, within five percent of budget, and to a level satisfactory to all stakeholders.

Surprisingly, only 18 percent of the respondents’ implementation projects qualified as successful…”

180 View – This is not good news. However it’s not surprising that ERP systems are not on time or on budget. Most organizations that have selected an ERP system have engaged a vendor to implement the new system based on poorly defined scope/requirements and a time and materials contract. Another big problem is that most organizations have not defined measurements of success before starting an ERP implementation making it almost impossible to achieve a “level satisfactory to all stakeholders”.

July 10, 2011 from Techcrunch – “…Enterprise software vendors have long enjoyed a counterintuitive, but highly lucrative, reward system. Its buyers are different from the ultimate users, and each group’s needs are radically different — traditionally, enterprise technology has been designed with the sale to the CIO in mind, and this produces solutions that are inevitably feature-bloated to “satisfy” the vast majority of a customer’s requirements.

This has created an oddly perverse dynamic where the vendors with the most feature-rich solutions win the contracts, but the users lose due to the complexity of the technology. And thanks to the incredibly long gaps between product releases, vendors are further motivated to cram as many features as possible into each version, hoping to check all the boxes on RFPs for the next few years.

So how do new entrants avoid this cycle all together? By focusing on building enterprise software that the users love, driving demand up to the CIO. Vendors like Workday, Jive, Yammer, or Rypple are responding by investing more in design, usability, openness, and the total user experience. They’re measuring success by user adoption, rather than feature checklists. And thankfully, buyers are catching on…”

180 View – The author is the founder and CEO of Box.net which according to their web site provides “Simple, intuitive content management.” As Box.net competes with the traditional enterprise software vendors, there is bias in the article. However, the article does challenge both the vendors of enterprise software and consultants like 180 Systems that help their clients select enterprise systems.

We do create RFP’s but our approach is only to ask the vendors to respond to the critical requirements. We also don’t include basic functionality that would be found in any system that services hundreds if not thousands of organizations. We also include requirements that reflect usability and openness. But we don’t avoid complexity. It is naïve to think that enterprise software can always be simple to use for complex business processes.

October 18, 2010 from CDC Software – “…One can never know everything there is to know about the complex details of an ERP system before purchasing that system. So one must know which questions to ask the vendors. Sometimes we don’t ask a question because it seems too detailed. But sometimes we don’t ask a question because it seems too obvious and we end up sadly surprised when learning to use the ERP tool! For example, every business in the world requires that a General Ledger has an ability to check for a balance between the debits and the credits before posting the entry. This is clearly an obvious question which does not need to be asked. So what are the obvious questions which SHOULD be asked?…”

180 View – We included this article despite the fact that it was authored by an ERP vendor because 1) It raised a good point about whether to ask the “obvious” questions and 2) It should be useful for process manufacturers thinking of selecting a new system. Our comments will be just to the first point about the obvious questions. We don’t include the obvious questions in our RFP’s as the systems we consider will cover the basics. The vendors that receive our RFP’s typically have hundreds if not thousands of clients such that the basics would need to be included. The author of the article suggests that including a requirement about debits equaling credits does not need to be asked. We agree but would you believe a prospect just relayed the story that one of the leading mid market systems that they had recently purchased had that exact problem? We are not sure of the cause of this problem yet but we anticipate that the problem resulted from a combination of inputs and conditions not normally encountered. Although you may not catch obvious requirements missing in the selection process, the implementation process should include tests that mimic the various combinations of inputs and conditions that would occur when the ERP system goes live.

Written recently by Michael Burns and sponsored by Deltek – “Business software systems are similar when it comes to basic functionality, but you need to look under the hood for the functionality specific to project–focused businesses (PFBs).This white paper will discuss the major functional differentiators of a PFB system as well as other criteria to consider when making a vendor selection decision…”

September 2020 from Toolbox.com – “…We had narrowed the selectees from 18 ERP vendors to two. Vendor A had a time and materials implementation services estimate of $380,000 and Vendor B estimated services at $180,000. They varied by $200,000! The ERP software license and support were about the same.

So why the difference? As I mentioned in my last post, it came down to a huge difference between the estimated number of hours the vendors thought the implementation would. ERP vendor A’s estimated total hours were about half of vendor B’s…” 

180 View – If you read this short article/blog, you will see that the vendor with the higher implementation fees was chosen in the end based on trust. We agree that trust is critical but we also think that an analysis should have been done to break out the two implementation plans so that you could compare apples to apples.

We now have about 50 systems participating in our free on-line service that will match the Top 10 ERP Systems to your requirements based on a short online survey. 

We continue to enhance our tools and have just completed the development of an RFP tool that will automate the creation of RFPs as well as the % fit calculations based on vendors’ response. The system will make it easier for us to create RFPs. It will also be easier for vendors to respond to our RFPs as their responses to standard questions will default based on previous RFP responses.

June 2010 from ProjectTimes written by IAG – “…Our objective in each case was to describe, in detail, all of the data flows,, the business rules, processes, an functionality needed as if our client’s next step was to build the system in-house regardless of whether the system is a commercial purchase package…”

180 View – We agree with the article on the importance of gathering business requirements, but disagree strongly with the approach. If you’re selecting a commercial ERP system used by hundreds if not thousands of organizations, it’s a waste of time to gather detailed requirements on basic functionality.

June 2010 from CAmagazine written by Michael Burns – “Before replacing any system, you need to document your requirements. Obvious, right? You just have to talk to the people working with the existing system and ask them for the requirements. But that would be a huge mistake, for a number of reasons.  If employees are afraid the new system will automate a big part of their job, they might be reluctant to tell the whole story. Also, they might be unable to think outside of their own box, or they might think certain tasks are not worth mentioning. There is a better way…”

March 30, 2010 from InfoWorld – “When the economy is bad, businesses hold off on buying new enterprise apps and instead try to prolong the life of the ones they have. But there’s still the significant expense of vendors’ support contracts. Third-party support contracts may be the answer to reducing that cost.

 Software vendors don’t want to lose those support revenues, especially since they’re making less in new and upgrade sales. Some even have tried to raise their support income through schemes such as tiered support (a debacle at SAP) or all-or-nothing support (Oracle’s most recent approach to extracting more money from customers) — but doing so risks driving customers even faster to third-party offerings…

 Is third-party support right for you?

The answer depends mainly on two factors, says Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman: where the application is in its lifecycle and how important it is for you to stay current with software upgrades. “If [a user] has an installation that’s a couple releases back, customized, and difficult to upgrade, third-party support is a more viable option,” he says. “If it’s an expanding business or a new installation, third-party isn’t a good option because you’re off the enhancement pack…”

180 View – Even if you’re not interested in third party support, the article does provide advice on maintenance agreements.