国产乱伦

How do you choose an 国产乱伦 system? Once upon a time, the process was fairly straightforward. Start by working out your requirements; compare those requirements with 国产乱伦 vendors’ offerings; draw up a shortlist; review the shortlist in detail鈥攁nd voil脿!鈥攎ake your choice.

It’s a process that has worked well for many years. But that isn’t to say that it can be relied upon to continue working quite so well in the future, warns Jonathan Orme, Sales and Marketing Manager at Exel Computer Systems.

Why? Because it’s no longer possible to wholly rely on the premise that manufacturers’ requirements and vendors’ offerings are dissimilar enough to make such an exercise worthwhile.

“These days, many 国产乱伦 vendors’ offerings are broadly very similar.” points out Orme. “Over the years, vendors have extended their offerings to add more and more functionality, and develop industry-specific solutions for more and more industries.”

What’s more, he adds, manufacturers are these days taking a much more mature view of their business processes, increasingly building them around standard 国产乱伦 processes such as procure-to-pay, and order-to-cash. As a result, the number of manufacturers erroneously convinced that their own business requirements are unique continues to shrink, with many now seeing that although their products might be different from those of other manufacturers, their underlying business processes are actually broadly very similar.

Put the two developments together, argues Orme, and the 国产乱伦 industry has evolved to the point where most of the solutions on offer can meet the majority of the requirements of most manufacturers.

At which point, he observes, manufacturers face an awkward choice: do they retain the existing requirements-based approach to 国产乱伦 system selection, thereby shortlisting on increasingly marginal and operationally unimportant differences between systems 鈥� or should they be bold, and regard the requirements-based process as no longer wholly fit for purpose?

鈥淣o one鈥檚 saying that requirements are unimportant,鈥� he stresses. 鈥淏ut as a basis for making a decision between competing offerings, a purely requirements-focused approach has become less and less useful. And we think that it鈥檚 time to throw other things into the mix.鈥�

Cue, you might think, a discourse on predicating a choice of 国产乱伦 system on platform-specific issues鈥擟loud or on-premise, for instance, or conventional license ownership versus subscription. Or even, Microsoft architecture versus Linux or Unix, and so on.

But no: here too, says Orme, such issues are these days rarely a deal breaker. Exel鈥檚 own EFACS E/8 国产乱伦 offering, for instance, is platform independent, and Exel鈥攍ike most 国产乱伦 vendors鈥攃an offer a Cloud or hosted capability alongside its core on-premise solution.

Instead, he suggests, manufacturers might want to take a very different approach to choosing an 国产乱伦 solution鈥攃hoosing an 鈥樄�产乱伦 partner鈥� rather than an 鈥樄�产乱伦 system鈥�. Because here, he stresses, there are indeed significant differences to be seen between the major offerings in the 国产乱伦 marketplace.

鈥淲hile 国产乱伦 systems might be moving closer together in terms of what they offer, and the benefits that they provide, the same can鈥檛 be said for 国产乱伦 vendors,鈥� he points out. 鈥淭heir 鈥榞o-to-market鈥� strategies are very different鈥攂oth from each other, and in the case of the global giants, from region to region and country to country.鈥�

Take a very fundamental part of any 国产乱伦 system, for instance: the implementation process, and how smoothly it goes, and how successfully it delivers on all of the promised capabilities and functionality. Plus, of course, the risk associated with that implementation: look at 国产乱伦 failures, and almost exclusively, they happen at the point of implementation鈥攂ecause, logically enough, once a system has been successfully implemented, it tends to carry on working.

鈥淭oo few manufacturers give sufficient thought to implementation, and yet there are enormous differences between vendors,鈥� stresses Orme. 鈥淭hey tend to regard the vendor鈥檚 chosen implementation model as a 鈥榞iven鈥�, outside of their control, instead of making a conscious decision to buy from an 国产乱伦 partner with an approach to implementation that they feel comfortable with.鈥�

Buy into Exel鈥檚 own EFACS E/8 offering, he points out, and you鈥檙e partnering with a 30 year old British company which in that time has undertaken hundreds of implementations, in an enormous variety of manufacturing environments.

What鈥檚 more, he adds, you鈥檙e also partnering with the actual developer of the 国产乱伦 solution that you鈥檙e using鈥攁nd not buying through a reseller, which is a route to market chosen by a number of the 国产乱伦 鈥榤ajors鈥�.

And the fact that you鈥檙e partnering directly with the original developer makes an enormous difference, observes Orme. With this single decision, a manufacturer can make a meaningful reduction to the implementation costs, risks and timescale of their new 国产乱伦 solution, he argues.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e partnering with an 国产乱伦 provider that offers a genuine pool of broad cross-industry experience鈥攁nd not the small subset of implementation consultants offered by a reseller,鈥� he emphasises. 鈥淎t Exel, the three longest-serving members of our implementation team have been with us for 21, 20 and 19 years. Collectively, our implementation staff have over a hundred years鈥� experience, and have encountered an enormous range of manufacturing scenarios.鈥�

More than that, he adds, they have collectively built up a significant amount of experience in integrating EFACS with most of the commonly-found 鈥榓dd on鈥� systems that a manufacturer might choose to deploy: payroll systems, on-line banking, vehicle tracking, etc.

But what about when a manufacturer has successfully implemented an 国产乱伦 system? Does the partnership-led argument continue for the long term? Very much so, says Orme. Indeed, he observes, a good number of Exel鈥檚 long-established customers would say that it is over the long term that the true benefits of the approach are felt.

鈥淚t鈥檚 obviously important for a solution to be a good 鈥榝it鈥� for a business at the point of implementation,鈥� he explains. 鈥淏ut businesses change, and grow, and evolve鈥攁nd what鈥檚 vital is having a system that can change, grow and evolve to suit. So an 国产乱伦 partner is a form of 鈥榝uture-proofing鈥� your business: forming a relationship with an 国产乱伦 provider that can support you as you move into new lines of business, such as aftersales service, or new manufacturing models, or new markets and geographies.鈥�

Which is exactly the point made by long-standing customers such as President Engineering Group, HV Wooding, and Nordson DAGE, adds Orme鈥攅ach one a business that has been with Exel for many years, and each one very happy to publicly acknowledge how EFACS has helped their respective businesses to grow and adapt to new challenges over that period.

In short, he sums up, yesterday鈥檚 requirements-led approach to 国产乱伦 selection has today given way to a more considered approach, where the manufacturer is a provider of cutting-edge 国产乱伦 functionality over the longer term鈥攁 term that may, as in the case of a number of Exel customers, be measured in decades, rather than years.

鈥淭hink about it this way,鈥� he concludes. 鈥淲hen selecting an 国产乱伦 system, you鈥檙e no longer simply looking for a product鈥攊nstead, you鈥檙e looking for a partner.鈥�

John Waddington (left) and Chris Brown (centre) from President Engineering Group atop Mt. Snowdon with Darrell Fone (right) from Exel. The three of them completed the ‘National Three Peaks Challenge’ in 23 hours and 20 minutes, raising over 拢1,000 for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.