ERP System Implementation: Evaluating Vendors and Software Fit

This report outlines a structured approach to evaluating ERP vendors and their software products' fitness to meet business requirements, particularly focusing on CRM implementation for a hypothetical manufacturing company. It identifies several top ERP vendors and details a selection process involving requirement analysis, RFP preparation, and weighted selection criteria. The process includes shortlisting vendors like Sage 100 ERP, Odoo ERP, Brightpearl, NetSuite, and Oracle E-Business Suite, followed by demos, presentations, and site visits to reference locations. The evaluation committee, comprising functional heads and top management, plays a crucial role in reaching a consensus and negotiating contracts. The report concludes that ERP implementation is a complex, business-oriented project requiring comprehensive evaluation and involvement from all functional divisions, and encourages use of Desklib for accessing similar solved assignments.

Running head: EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
Proposed Approach to Implementing an ERP System
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
Executive summary
This study is based upon designing an evaluation process for the case study company selected for
the first assignment. In this report a range of ERP vendors that are best in the industry are being
chosen. The report covers a structural approach towards evaluating these ERP vendors and
identifying top two or three of them. The selection of these vendors are being done based on their
scores.

2EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
Table of Contents
Study background............................................................................................................................3
A proposed approach to evaluating ERP vendors and their software products’ fitness to meet the
business requirements......................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

3EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
Study background
A hypothetical manufacturing company in the first assignment was identified as needing
to implement a relevant and feasible ERP system to help its operations perform better. The first
part of this assignment conducted an extensive study of the needs and followed several steps to
be able to identify the best-match ERP system for the company. Hence, ERP CRM was
identified as being necessary to the company. Now, this part of the assignment is oriented with
identifying the best ERP vendors meeting the business criteria of the company. The business
criteria or needs are to streamline the customer relationship management (CRM) in the case
study company. Customer relationship management will essentially help the company in
accessing to large-scale data in real-time. An appropriate data analytic will help to access to and
utilise the data in real-time. CRM will also help to offer products that are customized as per the
customer needs. Therefore, the main purpose of this assignment is to identify and analyse a
number of ERP vendors available in the market.
A proposed approach to evaluating ERP vendors and their software products’ fitness to
meet the business requirements
Before moving on to identify and analyze a range of ERP vendors, this is also important
to identify sources providing a list of ERP system. Such sites contain a detailed information
about a list of different ERP system. One of such sites is the “Top10ERP.org”. The site provides
the best research tool for manufacturers and distributors to search and analyse a range of ERP
software. The site only includes ERPs that are highly trusted and rated as well. All the vendors
listed in the site are highly ranked vendors in Canada and the United States. The site has already
helped as many as 950,000 distribution and manufacturing business in and across Canada and the

4EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
United States of America (Top10erp.org, 2019). The site contains ERPs meeting the list of
business criteria like as the follow (Top10erp.org, 2019):
 Materials Management (BOM)
 Production Management (PDM)
 Financial Management Solutions
 Inventory Management (WMS)
 Implementation and Maintenance Services
 Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
 Supply Chain Management (SCM)
In addition to this, the site includes ERPs only for manufacturing and distribution industries.
Hence, this should be an effective site to visit for the case study company as the company is also
a manufacturer.
Evaluation
There are many popular ERP software like Sage 100 ERP, Odoo ERP, Brightpearl,
NetSuite, NetSuite ERP and Oracle E-Business Suite (Mayeh, Ramayah & Mishra, 2016).
Attempting to select an ERP system can be a complex and time consuming process. ERP
software evaluations require experienced consultants. In context to this assignment, this will be
managed and supervised by the company’s CIP. However, this is advisable to take the help of
industry’s experts.
An evaluation committee:
Since an ERP implementation project is not just an IT project. This is indeed a business
oriented development. Hence, Chief Information Officer (CIO) alone will not be sufficient for

5EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
this project. Instead, the project must also have all functional heads. It should also be driven by a
chosen top management representative. Since all functional heads are being considered for being
a part of the evaluation committee the selected ERP need to have wide acceptance subsequently
(Olson, Johansson & De Carvalho, 2018).
Analysis of Requirement:
The analysis section will highlight the business needs of every business division. This
includes but not limited to customer relationship management (CRM). Vital requirements in
particular with the company will be as follows (Lai, Lai & Lowry, 2016):
 It must have the Distribution Requirement Planning (DRP) functionality
 In pallet tracking and transit inventory as one of the parts of shipping requirements
 Multi locations and multi-currency functionality
 One bill of lading linked to the multiple purchase orders
Requirement analysis is done to form a basis to prepare a Request for Proposal (RFP), which will
accommodate important commercial and technical perquisites. Technical perquisites’ examples
include upgradability, flexibility, field level security, user friendliness, database compatibility
and operating system. On the other hand, commercial perquisites’ include financial health of the
organization, reference sites, cost, resumes of consultants, high-level project plan, local presence,
post-implementation support, number of upgrades and installations.
Selection Criteria:
Selection criteria will mainly be in the form of points and questionnaire. Each question
will represent a different business need. The weightage of each or more points will vary
according to the criticality of the issue (Khan & Faisal, 2015).

6EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
Selection Process:
1. Shortlisting the vendors:
Sage 100 ERP: The ERP software provides a platform, which is robust in providing a number of
features. These include but not limited to establishing connection between the entire internal
processes, communicating the sudden market changes, manage vendors and people and comply
with regulatory needs. It also provides pre-built report templates to help manufacturers and
distributors be able to get it started fast. Despite having complex features, the software is still
accessible with the interface is easy to setup and navigate. It is also manageable even for those
who do not possess the technical knowledge. However, the user interface is not very seamless
and can be a factor to consider while purchasing this application.
Odoo ERP: The ERP can be integrated with various functional divisions liken accounting,
human resources, project management, manufacturing, inventory, purchase and an institution of
back-office apps. Moreover, this can also be integrated with e-commerce, POS, Sales apps and
CRM. It offers free app to up to fifty users. Odoo is one of the easiest ERPs to deploy. The
vendor is also reliable. There is no such major flaws in this ERP.
Brightpearl: Apart from offering service solutions to various functional divisions this ERP can
beat many others in terms of pricing. The ERP is competitively priced. This also has no such
evident flaws.

7EVALUATING ERP VENDORS
NetSuite: Originally designed to serve accounting-based services it now also grown into a full-
suite ERP with CRM. The ERP is leader in Cloud-based ERP. It is currently being used by more
than 20,000 companies.
Oracle E-Business Suite: This enables organizations reduce costs, make better decisions and
enhance the performance. This software is pretty much feasible to small and medium (SMES)
size organizations. The ERP is in constant upgrades of features. It means the performance of the
software will gradually improve with passing days. This is why it is valuable for firms and for
their huge investments.
(Haddara, 2018)
2. Demo and Presentation:
Top two or three vendors will be selected based on collating scores as obtained by them and
reaching a consensus about their final ranking. The selected vendors will be invited for demo and
presentation. However, the mode of presentation will be designed and prepared by the company.
This needs to be sent to each of the selected vendors in advance to avoid any performance related
failure. These vendors will be needed to walkthrough a chosen business scenario. These vendors
must also highlight the problem area of their offers (Niu et al., 2017).
3. Site visit along with contract negotiations:
After the committee has reached a common consensus regarding the choice of the ERP it is
then imperative to visit to reference sites. It is the responsibility of the vendor to provide
reference sites of identical version, similar size and industry and in the same geographical

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location. Team members who will be deployed at operating and handling the ERP in the case
study company should be given an opportunity to look and feel of the system at reference sites.
The group of people should ask a number of question at reference sites to be able to aware with
the selected ERP. Questions may include like asking about the overall satisfaction, support
concerns, functionality, cost, time and others. Once the site visit is over and if the committee
member finds that the selected ERP is a right choice then they should move to the final stage.
The final stage would comprise of final negotiation and procurement. Negotiations happen on
only a few factors. These are annual maintenance cost, license, support issues, payment plan that
also includes leasing option and legal and commercial terms (Weiss et al., 2016).
Conclusion
To conclude, this can be said that ERP implementation is a complex process and is time
consuming as well. It is not just an IT project, which will be taken care with a team of few
members. It is rather a business development project that would require involvements of all
functional divisions and a top management executive. They will all represent an evaluation
committee. The evaluation committee will be responsible for analyzing a range of ERPs from
different vendors. The case study company must ensure forming an evaluation team. The
evaluation team will shortlist two or three vendors based on their scores. Once these vendors are
selected they need to be called on for making presentation of the software. The company should
send a team of few members to the reference sites who will be dealing with the ERP system. The
team will ask a range of questions to the ERP vendors. Once they are satisfied with all they will
head for the procurement process.

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References
Haddara, M. (2018). ERP systems selection in multinational enterprises: a practical guide.
International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, 6(1), 43-57.
Khan, H., & Faisal, M. N. (2015). A Grey-based approach for ERP vendor selection in small and
medium enterprises in Qatar. International Journal of Business Information Systems,
19(4), 465-487.
Lai, V. S., Lai, F., & Lowry, P. B. (2016). Technology evaluation and imitation: Do they have
differential or dichotomous effects on ERP adoption and assimilation in China?. Journal
of Management Information Systems, 33(4), 1209-1251.
Mayeh, M., Ramayah, T., & Mishra, A. (2016). The role of absorptive capacity, communication
and trust in ERP adoption. Journal of Systems and Software, 119, 58-69.
Niu, B. Z., Chen, K. L., Huang, H. Z., Li, Y., & Chen, L. (2017). System Selection and
Performance Evaluation for Manufacturing Company's ERP Adoption. International
Journal of Computers, Communications & Control, 12(3).
Olson, D. L., Johansson, B., & De Carvalho, R. A. (2018). Open source ERP business model
framework. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 50, 30-36.
Weiss, C., Kofler, M., Keckeis, J., & Friedemann, R. (2016, November). Qualitative Analysis of
Different ERP Evaluation Models. In International Conference on Enterprise Resource
Planning Systems (pp. 17-25). Springer, Cham.