Chris Eccles, Director, Coe Consultancy asks you to think about the nature of different ERP supplier offerings
There are thousands of pieces of ERP software out there today even though there has been a radical reduction in suppliers.
Twenty years ago (for those of you as long in the tooth as me) every city/town had at least one or two Multisoft dealers, each able to provide a range of solutions. The Brand has gone but there are sites out there with the product I think, but also Tetra and many others. How many ERP solutions do Infor or Epicor own?
Making tax digital
I have been looking at the way suppliers respond to ‘making tax digital’ and it’s quite interesting. If your supplier is totally committed to the solution and willing to invest resource into your software, they will create from scratch a solution and embed it into the system – no exports to another environment, no CSV files – they will make it simple and straight forward.
However, if the product is a bit long in the tooth, the user base is shrinking and they may (or may not) have a new product round the corner, then they will recommend that you buy an add-on from a third party. This will surely be repeated in the construction industry with Reverse Charge VAT.
So look at what your provider is telling you, put your cynical hat on and think about the offering.
