were a small engineering firm about 20 shopfloor 9 staff, we need to drag parts of the company into the 21st century.

we have been looking about for a solution for stock control and stream lining everything, manufacturing process, see where orders are etc

it’s a big outlay but seems like it /might’ do the job, we have people coming in next week for a live demo.

anybody use it?

what alternatives are there?

i have to put my IT manager hat on and pretend to know what im on about!

Just a suggestion but it might also be worth investigating something like SAP who are pushing hard to get into smaller companies and doing some good deals at the moment – you could look at an overhaul of all your business systems at the same time to get best benefit… Have a look at Ciber who are a SAP reseller (SAP don’t sell direct) in the UK and who I’ve found to be very good.

Otherwise, we use Sage too (at a small division of our company), though again as a business system which includes engineering and manufacturing – it’s very simple and does the job ok in a basic way.

cheers will take a look.

SAP will work out very expensive in the long run. I remember the IT Director at Halfords saying after they’d installed it that it was like buying a house and slowly decorating it room by room.

SAP consultants charge the earth.

Have a look at Microsoft NAV Microsoft Dynamics NAV, it’s their ERP solution and it’s designed for small to mid sized businesses. It will also integrate into Microsoft Office and Sharepoint 2007.

My employer is about to go down the MS Dynamics route as well.

I believe it is a good product (if you like MS).. It’s also been in the UK for long enough for them to iron out any regional issues (ie dollars instead of pounds that affected Microsoft RMS when it came to the UK)

we have been looking about for a solution for stock control and stream lining everything, manufacturing process, see where orders are etc

You should ideally do a proper bit of business analysis before you look at specific software. At a very basic level it would be worth writing a list of things you want the new software to help you with and then rate them as Critical, Important, Would be nice…

That will give you the basic information you need to at least start the objective assessment of the various options.

SAP will work out very expensive in the long run. I remember the IT Director at Halfords saying after they’d installed it that it was like buying a house and slowly decorating it room by room.

Potentially true though that’s usually driven by companies insisting that they need non-standard functionality when in reality they just don’t want to change ‘the way they’ve always done it’.

Any additional cost after installation should only be to add new functionality with a direct ROI – if not then it’s a case that the original installation was poorly spec’d… Again a common problem for companies that expect the IT department to do all the work and don’t get involved (lesson 1 – ERP installation is a job for the whole company to get involved with, not just IT!)

Where I am, we’ve kept the main functionality of SAP very standard and used all the standard customisation available to get it to do what we want and ongoing costs are relatively low for how widely used the system is (almost every department of the company) – basically only maintenance and salary for 2.5 people to develop and support. Since we’re currently choosing not to invest in new functionality due to the economic conditions, we don’t have any additional costs.