The ERP Vendor Selection process can be challenging. It can also be frustrating or even humorous in some cases. Weeding through the morass of ERP Software Vendors is a task that hopefully only happens once every seven to ten years. Here are some tips to help make this process less painful.

1. Remember that the vendor is there for themselves. They may try to be your buddy, flower you with gifts, take you golfing, or whatever else it takes to close the sale. They want to build a relationship with you, so you will buy based on a feeling of gratitude towards them. If you do nothing else, keep the relationships with these vendors above board and strictly professional.
2. Engage a consultant or service to help weed through the numerous potential vendors to get you to your shortlist. Too many times, managers and owners have taken a shot in the dark and found the first names they find on Google, or that those that they saw at a trade show. Do your due-diligence. Find a company who specializes in vendor matching or selection. One such ERP Vendor Selection company is SoftwareAdvice.com. They can provide a suitable fit for your company.
3. Drive the vendors down your path, not down theirs. If you let the vendor lead the processes, you will only end up at their solution. You need to strongly assert that you are driving the process and then follow this up with action such as pre-defined scripts for them to demonstrate and defined criteria for what they will show you such as references. If you lead the demo, they will either shine or fall apart depending upon how closely they match your business. If they shine, they were both prepared and understand your business. If they fall apart, then they probably are not a good fit.
4. Find out what ERP Software others in your industry are using. Sometimes with specialized, niche industries such as lumber production, or semi-conductor manufacturing, generalized ERP systems do not handle the unique requirements of that industry. Talk to members of your industry association on what they use. Do the proper research on the ERP Vendors you might be looking at.
5. When negotiating with your primary candidate ERP Vendor, never take the first or even the second offer. In fact, if you time your negotiations to the end of a month, quarter or even more ideal, the fiscal year end for that vendor, you will be able to negotiate great discounts. Every sale counts at the end of the period and often they will make a concession to book the deal in that period.
6. When you are talking to the ERP Software Vendor, find out who will be implementing the software. Often it is a Value Added Reseller (VAR) who will be doing the implementation. If that is the case, shop the VARs and find one that you feel most comfortable with. Just because there is a VAR on the sale of the software, does not necessarily mean they are the best qualified to do the implementation. But if you are to do this, do this early. You probably want to identify the VAR to go forward with as soon as you have a short-list of Software Vendors. If you wait until you made the purchase, it is unfair to the VAR who helped to demonstrate the software and spent all the effort finding out about your business.

If you follow these simple tips, you will be a lot better off and find a solution that is better suited for your business and you will have a easier time implementing as well. Work with the ERP Vendors as a business partner, but keep the relationship professional and hold them to a level playing field.

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ERP Vendor Selection is a post from: ERP and More!

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Author: Antje Wilmer Customer relationship management or CRM is defined as the process of tracking and organizing contacts with your current and prospective customers. An effective CRM practice...

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I just found today a great tool called Twittercal. http://www.twittercal.com

With this tool, you can simply send a message to a twitter account and it will post an appointment on your Google Calendar.

I have Outlook syncing with my Google Calendar. I have an iPhone that is linked to my Outlook. So from any calendar or from Twitter I can set appointments.

First, you sign up for a twittercal account. (Actually, you are creating a link between your twitter account and gmail account.)

You then follow gcal (a twitter user), and from then on you send your appointments via a twitter post such as:

“d gcal Appointment with Sophia at 7pm tomorrow”

d stands for a direct message, gcal is the user you are sending the message to, and finally the appointment description and time.

Within a minute or so, it automagically appears in your Google Calendar.

Give it a try!

calendar, google, twitter

Google is building Chrome, the new web browser. Reading the comic book that Google has published that explains all the features, it is apparent that Google is creating a platform upon which all of it’s new applications can run upon. Hmm. Sounds like an operating system of sorts.

People are commenting and comparing this new browser to Firefox. To me though it is a lot more. It is the platform upon which all new Google apps will run. It is the true starting point of a web based operating environment for the masses.

Taking it a step further, I sat down and listed out for myself all the competing apps that Microsoft and Google have. If Google looks at the Internet as its operating system (actually it also has G-OS), then Microsoft is a target competitor. There are many new Google, web-based apps, that have a direct competitor in the Microsoft world. Here is my list. Comment below and add any I might have missed.

Microsoft	Google
Windows	Gos (google’s linux operating system)
Word	Google Docs – Document
Excel	Google Docs – Spreadsheet
PowerPoint	Google Docs – Presentation
SharePoint	Google Sites
Outlook – Email	Gmail
Outlook – Calendar	Google Calendar
Outlook – Contacts	Gmail Contacts
Outlook – Tasks	Google Home Page – To Do widget
Outlook Today	Google Home Page
Internet Explorer	Google Chrome
MSN	Google.com
MSN IM	Google Talk
Windows Photo Gallery	Picasa – Photo Albums
MS Visio	Google SketchUp
MS Frontpage	Google Page Creator

So with the Internet as the base platform, and Chrome as the system, then all the other applications just run within Chrome. There you go, a fancy new operating system. Combine this with all the other Software As a Service (SAAS) and Platform as a Service (PAAS) offerings, such as the Salesforce.com and Google combination, you are now building not only an operating system, but a complete platform to run your business on.

Add new tag, applications, chrome, google, paas, saas, salesforce.com

Do you use Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari? Get ready to meet the new web browser, Google Chrome. It is supposed to be released today, launching Google deeper into the web applications race.

This browser from what I can tell is very efficient in terms of memory management and is designed for what else… Google Apps. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Home page, and others will run very effectively with Chrome. The significant thing about Chrome is that it is a multi-threaded, multi-process browser. This means that if something freezes, you only loose the tab you are in, rather thant the entire browser. It is like a virtual operating system. hmm….

I tried to download it from http://www.google.com/chrome, but got a 404 error. Apparently it will be available at 1pm EST or 11am Pacific time. I will be checking back.

chrome, google, web browser

I found this video and I am blogging it as much for my own reference as for yours. It is worth watching a few times.

Essentially, Seth Godin is speaking to a group of Google people. He is talking about how to be the next cool thing. Very interesting perspective!

google, marketing, seth godin, video