Do you want a single seamless solution across your organisation or bolt-ons and middleware that hook back into legacy technology?

Either way, integrating with the old way of doing things or taking on a new mid-range ERP system requires a clearly defined business plan and a roadmap of exactly what needs to be achieved and when, including expected return on investment.   It is a transition that needs to be made in stages and driven by senior management with the full input of each department to ensure everyone's processes and requirements are well considered.

In part two of iStart's mid-market ERP feature Keith Newman looks at Microsoft Great Plains and Geac.

Microsoft Great Plains - Global pedigree re-geared for local market

Great Plains, acquired by Microsoft in April 2001, is increasingly gearing itself to cope with the small to medium enterprises of the New Zealand marketplace particularly with the re-release of its Dynamics product.

Dynamics and Great Plains higher end offering eEnterprise cover-off the whole footprint of enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules including financials, manufacturing, distribution, e-commerce and business intelligence, field service management, human resources, project planning and project accounting modules. An ASP option is also available. Great Plains has about 150 users in New Zealand.

Dynamics, which costs about $4500 per seat, was created for companies looking to expand their financial systems and leverage information across a business including project management, billing and sales order processing modules. It offers a front office sales and marketing solution that can easily integrate with back office systems and is able to scale up as businesses grow. It's geared to work with Microsoft SQL Server and is an integral part of its .Net strategy.

Locally the company offers a 24 hours support system and greater commitment to the local market is imminent with the additional of new channel partners and the soon to be announced appointment of a channel manager.

There are over 100 sites using aspects of Great Plains ERP software in New Zealand including eft-pos network provider ETSL, Pan Pac Forests, Maxxium, Merial, Athena Bathroom Products, Chep and Snell Packaging .

Athena Products, manufacturers and wholesalers of bathroomware, are on plan this year partly due to efficiencies created by licensing a hosted ERP solution from Great Plains, installed by Olympic Software.  
 
 "We have improved our return on investment through increased service levels to customers. We're ahead of where we were last year and assisting that growth is our ability to give customers the reports they need," says Athena financial controller Mark Wilson.

The company, which has an office in West Auckland and a branch in Victoria, Australia, distributes its bathroom products to retail customers including Plumbing World, PlaceMakers, MasterTrade and Mico Wakefield.

Athena acquired a 16-user license for Great Plains eEnterprise suite version 6 running on an ASP environment hosted by Unisys. Previously they ran a Unix and Oracle-based system for which support was no longer available. "We just got through Y2K by crossing our fingers," Mr Wilson commented.

The decision taken 12 months ago to go Great Plains has resulted in a massive cultural change, particularly through enabling real-time access to a large number of reports and daily information.  Sales figures can now be broken down into specific territories enabling sales reps to monitor and be accountable for growth and profitability.

"Adopting the ASP environment was a significant decision to take and we needed some guidance in that. At the time we had minimal knowledge of Great Plains but the more knowledge we gained the more excited we became.  Going with a hosted solution meant less capital investment, reduced operating costs, minimal support infrastructure and no requirement for internal IT staff."

The first modules to go live were financials and sales and distribution. The Australian branch recently implemented dispatch and sales modules within a tight five-week timeframe. Athena is also using collections management, multi-currency, fixed assets, multi-dimensional analysis, sales order processing, purchase order processing, Crystal Reports and account level security.

Mr Wilson is particularly impressed with the strong report writing functions. The company is now totally internally 'I-focussed' across every business unit. "That means delivering to customer's in-full, on-time and in-spec through being able to manage inventories. We have customer acknowledged lead times and our goal is to exceed the customer's expectation. It's very much real-time," he says.

"The guys in the shower door manufacturing division know what orders they've got in the system - daily reports are generated detailing what's coming through so they can schedule the next days work. We can monitor, manage and achieve that via Great Plains," he says.

In addition every report can 'dump' into an Excel environment. "For example - if the procurement department places an order for a sum greater than $5000, a system generated flag will ensure I am notified via an email. When the purchase order is placed I can see the status of it until its authorised, which allows us to manage cash flow."  This functionality was customised for Athena by Olympic Software.

An order for the Great Plains manufacturing module is on hold until Athena relocates its operation to a new purpose built factory in Avondale.  A more automated manufacturing process is planned.
 
Meanwhile Mr Wilson says the company will continue to add to and upgrade the Great Plains software. "We're continuously developing system enhancements in conjunction with Olympic Software with the never ending goal of obtaining greater efficiencies."

Chep equipment pooling systems provide a rental service to the food, manufacturing and grocery retail industry sectors helping to reduce their cost of owning pallets and containers.  Depending on the needs of industry a variety of pallets and containers constructed from timber or plastic, are available for use by customers.

Customers hire the Chep equipment when they have a need and can pick it up from any of their eight nationwide depots. About four years ago the company began looking for a flexible accounting package.

Unique Scenarios Catered For

The company, which operates in more than 30 countries across six continents, is dependent on an inventory control systems based in Australia and running on proprietary technology. Bruce Morrison, accountant with Chep New Zealand says the company needed an accounting system that could work with the inventory system to make sense of the unique billing cycle.

"Very few computer systems can handle the types of invoice the company works with. We have a seven-day cycle and need to calculate day movements. What we've done is interface Great Plains into the in-house pallet management system, which generates invoices and keeps track of the inventory. Olympic Software wrote the interface program which takes our invoice information, summarises it and pastes it into a batch for us.  Previously the reports were manually generated now it's a 5 minutes job rather than a half hour job."

Richard Johnston (pictured) regional director of Great Plains Microsoft Asia Pacific channel operations says the company is placing more emphasis on segmenting the market to prioritise customer needs and ensure products are more properly targeted.

Initially the focus was on companies with revenues of $5 million upwards or less than 500 employees, which is where Great Plains is focusing its re-released Dynamics suit.

"Dynamics fits a segment of the market where we haven't had a product. It more closely matches the typical New Zealand business at a price point that more sensibly suits them. The customer base over time indicates strength in business services and wholesale distribution. We expect vertical strategies will evolve over time as we engage new partners," says Mr Johnston.

There's been reluctance for some time to upgrade technology. "We think its time to start making the transition once you've asked the hard questions. A lot of New Zealand businesses have technology that's quite old and we haven't been giving them a compelling reason to change. Why go through the pain of change when there's no real visibility of the benefits of doing that?" he asks.

For many companies in New Zealand he says it's still about getting back to basics. "There's still a lot to be gained from making sure that you have all the parts of the business working together and that you have a good handle on what's going on in the organisation.  Now is the right time to ask who are you partnering with and will they be able to deliver you the best options going forward."

Over the next few years Great Plains promises a host of new technology will be delivered in conjunction with Microsoft's .Net. "One of the reasons we're together with Microsoft is that we share a common vision for the next generation interconnected business solution. There's been a massive increase of resources being committed to the .Net business solutions," says Mr Johnston.

Geac Enterprise Solutions - Local history, broad options

Geac New Zealand is a software & services organisation with a 30-year history in the local market originating as Fact International. Initially it developed its own distribution and systems software and as it began to expand was acquired by Canadian-based Geac.

The company specialises in manufacturing and distribution, central and local government and solutions for commercial services organisations with annual revenues ranging from $10-300 million with 10-100 users.

It has 150 customers in New Zealand covering about 250 sites ranging from large corporates like ACC and Sealord to local authorities and service industry suppliers including Baycorp.  Maxwell Winches, Elastomer Products and Hillside Building Supplies are users of Streamline. The ACC, Dept of Courts and Tourism Holdings have SmartStream, Sony, Wickcliffe and Shiseido use its AS/400 System21 solution.  Sealord, HPM NZ and Donaghys Industries have Fact/i2 and Nuplex Industries, Kohler NZ and Macpac still use the original TIMS product.

Geac's flagship product is StreamLine a Microsoft based ERP solution designed and developed by the core architects responsible for original Fact and TIMS systems, with contribution from the teams which developed FICS, Factory Manager and FGH in Australia. StreamLine is focused on hard goods manufacturing and distribution and can be easily customised for a variety of customer requirements. Modules include financials and distribution, manufacturing planning tools plus customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities, e-business flexibility and B2B integration capabilities.

Geac also offers SmartStream based around Microsoft SQL Server or Sybase on Unix which was developed by Dun&Bradstreet and acquired by Geac in 1996. There are over 2000 sites worldwide with a stronghold in corporates and service organisations.

For IBMs AS/400 iSeries Geac acquired System 21 from JBA International in the UK in 1999. It is in use by 3000 sites worldwide in the automotive and food and beverage supply chain.

Between its various offerings Geac is able to offer most modules to suit a range of industries from make to order, process flow and style manufacturing through to distribution and advanced warehousing.

It offers full e-commerce capabilities for interactive web-based trading and unattended EDI/XML document exchange with trading partners or using messaging hubs like EDIS Communications or The ECN Group. For business intelligence it uses OLAP with SQL Server with optional integration with tools such as Corvu, Cognos PowerPlay and proprietary solutions such as PST.

StreamLine is hosted at GDC Communications in Auckland on the  iVASP platform. Hillside is the first reference site and a second site is being deployed this month ( March 2002). Work is underway to host SmartStream at GDC for ASP deployments. System21 can be hosted at GDC. 

Geac is the largest ERP vendor in the country by headcount with offices in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Its parent company trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It owns the source code for all its key products enabling local modifications and customizing.

Local Roots in Manufacturing and Distribution

Nigel Birtwell, Geac's general manager, enterprise solutions division says the great differentiator for his company is its local history and local development capabilities. The intuitive user interface of Streamline and the fact it was written to become a fully integrated ERP system and comes from a manufacturing and distribution base rather than financial and project management is also seen as a plus.

"This is no longer just about back-office systems for big companies. Geac has proven expertise in delivering solutions for all shapes and sizes of companies, with a focus on ROI and guaranteed outcomes," says Mr Birtwell (pictured).

Geac's product are designed to provide a full end-to-end solution of integrate with a company's existing systems. Its Flexicom product for example not only hooks in to Geac's manufacturing and distribution products StreamLine and i2, also works as an add-on to Mfg.pro, BPCS and other similar products which need web-based sales order fulfilment and order tracking. 

As long as the host ERP and supply chain solution is capable of tracking inventory at different stages in the production and distribution cycle Flexicom can quickly work out how many units of any commodity item are in stock and where the last order is.

Electrical component supplier HPM on Auckland's North Shore has a Flexicom interface into its i2 system.  Nick Moor operations manager for HPM says whilst most businesses start off with the internet e-commerce component, his company has done it the other way around because of the needs of two customers."

On the distribution side that means EDI handles purchase orders coming into the business and an invoice going back to the customer with additional email confirmations included. The customer can also go on and look at their accounts."

Hillside Building Supplies financial manager Teresa Johnson says the company needed to get up and running quickly with an ERP product for its new operation. The business only went live in April last year and after consulting ASP supplier GDC several options were suggested.
 
The builders supply firm handles timber, panel products, building materials and hardware for the trade and has about 4500 stock items and opted for Geac's StreamLine financials and trading package modules for its 15-users hosted off-site as an ASP solution.

"There are some aspects of the system that aren't necessary for our operation including the ability to handle multi-branch and multi-currencies. The system is used throughout the branch for processing every day business transactions including sales, inventory, accounts payable, receivable and general ledger " says Ms Johnson.
 
The company is keen to extend the use of the software as it grows, possibly including the customer relationship module for customer access to catalogue information to enable orders to be placed and processed on-line. ":StreamLine has a very good front-end sales module but there were aspects of the system that didn't handle part of our operations as well as we would have liked.  Geac has had to customise these for us before GDC installs the modifications." she says.

In Summary

Before you choose your partners for the hi-tech dance that'll enable you and your customers and suppliers to join the integrated electronic community there are some hard questions to be answered.

The market has matured. No single companies owns the market and the flexible nature of this new generation of mid-range ERPs means they can be customised to meet most business needs from manufacturing and front end office requirements right through to supply chain management and distribution.

The customer is more informed than ever and can see through the hype and sales talk. They want evidence including test cases and success stories and to have complete confidence in the solution they're about to implement long before the systems integrators or techies start nailing things down.
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