Do you want your own fully programmable ERP? - Part 1

By J.C.Melo

We are in a transition phase in Managerial Administration models of any company or Government, because three factors are summing for that:

1. The new powerful business Information Technologies and its more and more smaller costs, like ERP, CRM, BI, etc.,

2. The creativity of new MBA to generate value and its corresponding engineering - for example, Feedback Control System - in administrative and managerial fields,

3. Several different layers in companies in what refers to its managerial and administrative automation levels.

This created not very orthodox solutions, and one of them is installation of a Front-End System above Transational System already existent in your company that - by any reason - cannot be substituted by a "pure" ERP System.

Inside existent tools and for reasons that will be exposed, we choiced IBM Lotus Notes software for that purpose, briefly Notes as it's widely known.

The Notes has following programmable structures that can be used to change and to use in a Front-End System of any online managerial or accounting System that already exists in your company, like ACCPAC/SBT, Macola and others 150 companies:

- It can be integrated into Internet, to enlarge area of DAS/DDC functions at regional, national or world levels.

- He has so called Replication, that allows Head office of a company in New York to change an only field in its local database, and automatically and in Real-Time that same field assumes same value in local database of a Branch in Chicago or Tokyo. And vice-versa. That means to have a national database - or regional or world - and not only local. This Replication can be programmed, a field or a group of fields can be Replicated or not, in agreement with goals of company.

- Theoretically that would create problems - for example, simultaneously an operator in New York change content of local field "m" and an operator in Chicago change content of its same local field "m" - but Lotus Notes will solved this problem in a transparent way to both users with use of Replication, and conflict doesn't exist.

In a way, I could see his point; after all, a company should avoid spending too much effort to develop features that nobody cares about. In most companies, time and manpower are precious commodities that must be invested wisely. Nevertheless, his statement left a rather sour taste in my mouth, and here's why.

First, his choice of words suggests that customer's needs are relatively unimportant, and that profit-making is only thing that matters. To my mind, this is a false dichotomy. It's true that a company has to guard its bottom line, and that its resources are limited. It's true that it must avoid making extravagant promises to its customers. At same time though, a company that adopts a lukewarm attitude toward pleasing its customers is unlikely to engender a great deal of client loyalty. A successful company is one that understands importance of customer delight.