ERP or In-house Program Development? 1

[ArsLonga]

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I'm charged with finding a programming package or platform that can integrate many engineering functions, e.g. preliminary sales quotes, streamlined/automated proposal generation & equipment design, and interfacing with database (to name a few...basically, from soup to nuts).

I would greatly appreciate advice or steering in a specific direction. Would you recommend choosing 1) a commercial program or 2) developing an in-house solution ? What are the best types for #1 or if #2 is a better choice what is a superior platform? (Visual Basic, C/C++, Java, Python?) The disadvantage with #2 though is managing such a program alongside my normal responsibilities.

I would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you for your comments and input.

 

[MikeHalloran]

You can't manage either one "in addition to" your normal responsibilities. You probably couldn't finish #2 in your lifetime.

Find a consultant to analyze your needs and make a recommendation, so someone else can be blamed when it all turns to, uh, used food.

You will, eventually, throw away at least one ERP system.




Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MadMango]

First off, you need to determine what your requirments for an ERP system are. I doubt you can buy one "out of the box". Once you get input from Engineering, Sales, Purchasing, Accounting, Shipping, etc., then you can determine if you want to make or buy a system. Then think about training others to use it, the input/extraction of data, standard and custom reports, etc.

You will need to contact a consultant as mentioned above.

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Budget and implementation timeframe will play a big part in your decision.

Off-the-shelf solutions may force changes in the way things are currently done, but most are quite customisable.

Developing an all-inclusive in-house solution would be very expensive and time-consuming, and unless you are in a unique environment, would be re-inventing the wheel.

 

[ecwcee]

This is definitely a struggle that many engineering firms go through. My company has been in business for over 80 years, obviously from a small start, to now having 12 offices in 4 states. We have a very talented web programmer that works on the public website and a very extensive intranet. When they hired me it was mainly because they were feeling the pains of a little company turned big, and needed an engineer with knowledge of the company's work that could also help from the programming and management side. So I spent my first few weeks going all through the company's engineering organization, and working with the web programmer to learn the framework of the intranet and database server. I then developed quite a few tools that "bridge the gap" between engineering and information management, and was really able to streamline the project management at the company.

Since then we've looked at one very nice software package but the powers that be are reluctant because it's so expensive. Until then we keep doing what we're doing, even though it's clear every time we do something it's just another small piece of the nice big package out there. The biggest difficulty with where we are now is that different factions of the company operate on different software; accounting, records management, engineering project managers all use different software packages that take a lot of smashing to get to communicate together. When you're talking about bringing engineering management, proposals, sales, etc. into one system it will be very important to find a flexible software package that can grow to accomodate all of your functions. Because you really don't want to be working with at least 4 unique software packages spanning at least 3 very unique database technologies, trust me.

You'll definitely need some kind of consultant. There are lots of considerations and hours involved with things like data conversion. When we switched accounting software a number of years ago it took many months and a very large sum of money to have a consultant convert the old data into the new system. Since my company now has two capable web/database programmers, money could be saved in that area, but at the same time people tend to be reluctant to pick up and change to a new (better) system if they can still say that the old one is working.

Maybe it won't work as well in different industries, but the package that was presented to us is called Deltek Vision. Very expensive but absolutely amazing from a programming standpoint. Hope this helps!

Eric

 

[ArsLonga]

Thank you all for your input.

What is the average cost of software + consultation?

 

[Mech151]

ERP system rollout can easily cost $1M in total.

 

[Mech151]

I would also add that the home-grown solution can very easily turn into a nightmare. You can easily end up in a situation where there is only one person on the planet that can support the software, and development will continue forever (unless your programmer quits, then you will be left with the 'opportunity' to buy an ERP system.

 

[ecwcee]

Good point Mech151. We've worked very hard on writing documentation and instructions for using the in-house developed system as well as the code behind it. I try to go back frequently and add descriptive comments to the code and rewrite blocks in more efficient, easier to understand methods. But a very, very important consideration with the in-house method.

What I had been wanting to add, however, is that I think the in-house approach has been very successful here. While we don't have the massive software of the commercial package, we've come up with a very non-intrusive solution that's gone leaps and bounds as far as saving the company time and money. If you have the right person or people, highly-motivated in-house developers can be a big success. Looking at it objectively, however, there is a risk involved.

 

[AHay]

You could take a look at some of the different open-source ERP systems that are out there (for instance

http://www.erp5.org/).

Even if one doesn't do exactly what you want, it may be better than starting from scratch with in-house development.

Andy