The biggest target market for the ERP application is the Manufacturing Industry. The Enterprise Resource Planning application is normally meant for manufacturing companies. In olden days, most of the big manufacturing companies were unable to track the manufacturing product status and could not able to schedule the machines and manpower according to the plan. This was the time; Material Resource Planning (MRP) came to the lime light. After that, with the additional features integrated to the old application to serve the entire company needs. This tremendous application was named as ERP.
Remember, not all enterprise resource planning applications fit into the all environments. ERP is a readymade application, which is developed based on the common needs of any company. It is a skeleton that can be customized according to the customer requirements. Too much customization is also very bad because it will take away the original features of the enterprise resource planning application.
The best manufacturing software will focus on the core functional area of the manufacturing industry and i.e. production. Just do not blindly zero in on the software. If you take SAGE ACCPAC, it is purely an accounting application. It does not serve the purpose of manufacturing needs. The sage ACCPAC needs to be bundled with some other production software to get the results out. If you take RAMCO ERP application, it will definitely suit into the production environment.
The customer has to know the business process first. He has to understand whether his business is process or discrete manufacturing. Based on this process, he starts evaluating the best software in the industry. SAP R/3 fits into all manufacturing industries. Ramco ERP some times may not be suitable into the process manufacturing like pharmaceutical companies. If sage ACCPAC is bundled with Optipro, the integrated solution is best fit for the discrete manufacturing companies such as textiles, castings and similar type of industries. The same SAGE ACCPAC is bundled with PFW ERP; this is best solution for process manufacturing such as pharmaceutical companies. You can not implement an application which is very good in accounting, in the production environment.
There is no right solution in the market to fit into the exact requirement for the manufacturing companies. Each and every application has to be integrated with some or the other application or customize some part of the software to cater the customer requirements. Most of the manufacturing production units work on their own unique and unusual way. We can not blame them for that. The only solution is customizing the application to some extent and integrates the same with other applications to serve the customer needs.
Implementing ERP application is most difficult for manufacturing companies. It takes a lot of time to understand the business process for the functional consultants and propose the right solution. The training of the solution to end user is a big headache for the vendor. It is always a bundled or an integrated application which can be the best it for the manufacturing companies.
