Enterprise-Wide Software Solutions : Integration Strategies and Practices

This book is a tutorial and reference for evaluating and implementing a software package solution that allows a company to migrate from a legacy system. It provides practical advice to managers at companies implementing a variety of software solutions; furthermore, the book is not product specific.

Most corporate officers charged with purchasing package software products are not experienced buyers, and there is very little information available to guide you through this process. Enterprise-Wide Software Solutions is the thorough tutorial and lasting reference you need to help you implement, use, and manage these powerful tools. For those organizations seeking to obtain the maximum benefits of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementations, this book provides a basis for planning and managing expectations among all relevant groups - corporate management, information technology staff, users, outside consultants, and the software vendor. This book helps you reduce costs and hours to more reasonable levels. Crucial topics - budgeting, project team organization, cost justification, customization, outsourcing, reengineering, testing, training, and more - are covered in detail, allowing you to concentrate on the selection process, implementation strategy, and package software product that is best for your company.

In an effort to become more flexible and competitive, companies are migrating from legacy systems to integrated business management package software products. These products represent the future for companies that need to streamline their business processes and improve the sharing of information in order to compete in the rapidly evolving business world. Yet adopting a package software solution is not a process to be taken lightly, and this critical change can represent a tremendous investment of time and resources.

Most corporate officers charged with purchasing package software products are not experienced buyers, and there is very little information available to guide you through this process. Enterprise-Wide Software Solutions is the thorough tutorial and lasting reference you need to help you implement, use, and manage these powerful tools. This book provides a basis for planning and managing expectations among all relevant groups--corporate management, information technology staff, users, outside consultants, and the software vendor.

Companies are investing significant amounts of money and time to implement business package solutions. This book helps you reduce these costs and hours to more reasonable levels. Crucial topics--budgeting, project team organization, cost-justification, customization, outsourcing, reengineering, testing, training, and more--are covered in detail, allowing you to concentrate on the selection process, implementation strategy, and package software product that is best for your company.

This book addresses the evaluation, selection, installation, implementation, use, and economic advantages of using business software packages. In the United States and all over the world, companies are installing software packages for business automation at an unprecedented rate: financial, manufacturing, distribution, and, primarily, integrated packages, which promise to cover all internal functions in one product. Most of the firms and their corporate officers who purchase these packages are not experienced buyers of such products and related services. This book establishes a baseline for planning and managing expectations between corporate managers, their information technology staff, and outside consultants.

The human issues are critical here--not the technical ones--and the human issues are less likely to change quickly. Although automation has become a tool kit for every manager at every type and size of organization, there is little material available to guide the journeyman in how to implement, use, or manage these tools. The distributed, integrated, automated environment has become an avalanche that threatens to sweep up the business community; it has already outpaced the educational mechanisms necessary to support it.

The book is a guide to what to expect when a company is getting ready to purchase and implement a new software package. It provides an "A to Z" perspective of the many technical and nontechnical elements that must be considered. It provides a framework for implementing all the bits and pieces that make up a system.

Experience shows that the real problems with business packages are comparability (evaluation and selection), evangelism (getting corporate consensus), training and motivating the end users, and maintenance (support, extensions). These issues are very well covered by the author.

This book can be read and used to establish a "common language" among groups of people who rarely speak the same language today: senior business managers, information technology managers, information technology key users and end users, and external business consultants.

Companies are spending significant amounts of money and time to implement business package solutions. This book can be of tremendous value to the business community by helping readers reduce the necessary costs and time required to install new company-wide software to more reasonable levels.