Send us Fan Mail BigCommerce is the name you will hear in the B2B space. But does BigCommerce have the same options as some of the other sophisticated platforms such as Magento, with a security layer to enable procurement flows, quoting functionality, and catalog release process? Even for the omnichannel experience, you might need an external POS. But one thing it does offer is a very strong variant layer, which might be helpful for brands that might offer customizable options for each style. Th...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 387
Send us Fan Mail When an ERP system uses a specific buzzword or something that customers might relate to, it's typically the marketing hype. And not really the strength of the product. For example, several cloud products might include a "cloud" word, even if they might be legacy products. Just to prey on uninformed customers! But there is one system that really lives to its name called Infor Visual. That has similar visual capabilities and organization that is rare to find in smaller software pa...
Sep 20, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 386
Send us Fan Mail There are many different business models for how each ERP vendor promotes its products. Some like to go direct to the customers with their own professional services team while the others only sell through their partners. While not common, some vendors also have OEM arrangements, which is similar to the technology licensing business model, where a distributor may have exclusive rights to modify the product and white label with their branding. This additional layer of complexity m...
Sep 19, 2022•41 min•Ep. 385
Send us Fan Mail eCommerce consultants have been the most enthusiastic about the importance of product configurators. How this is a need for every custom manufacturer. But product configurator comes in many shapes and sizes. A product configurator could be a simple form on a WordPress site that sends out an email to the backend team. Or a 3D configurator with a live product experience. Just like the way you would experience in the Virtual Reality world. But while talking about configurator exper...
Sep 15, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 384
Send us Fan Mail If you were to name the top 2-3 eCommerce platforms, I am pretty sure you would have Magento on your list. Sure there are always going to be pros and cons of every single platform, but you might find a lot more pros with Magento than cons. The pros are going to be especially applicable for businesses with complex products and catalogs. The businesses that are B2B are likely to benefit from Magento's capabilities. But can Magento be a good replacement for companies exploring ente...
Sep 14, 2022•58 min•Ep. 383
Send us Fan Mail Sage 50 is the household name for companies that might be in the revenue range of up to $10 million. In fact, there was a time when Sage 50 literally meant that the software was designed for companies with up to 50 users. But some companies may use it even after they outgrow that mark. Sage 50 competes with QuickBooks desktop and will have all the problems that QuickBooks Desktop is likely to have. These problems are likely to become severe with the interaction of offline and on...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 382
Send us Fan Mail Creating good content takes time, effort, and investment. But targeting the right content for the right target buyer and prospect is even harder. Because how do you know which prospect might care for which piece of content? Also, even if they might care about a specific topic today, they might move on from that topic in the future. And this makes engagement marketing super hard. But artificial intelligence is changing that in helping curate content and distributing to the approp...
Sep 12, 2022•33 min•Ep. 381
Send us Fan Mail Outside process management is a critical process for manufacturers. It's hard for them to run their operations without the support for this process. But you will be shocked how many ERP systems don't support this process natively. Despite their claims that they all are designed to work for any industry. So what are the nuances when it comes to outside process management? And how involved does it get across the industries? Can you manage it outside of the ERP? In today's episode,...
Sep 08, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 380
Send us Fan Mail Consulting companies have never been good at selling products. IBM is a classic example. They have always struggled with their true identity. While they were one of the strongest engineering organizations, just like BlackBerry, product marketing is a different skill. And that's probably the reason why they ended up selling all of their software assets to other organizations.' WebSphere Commerce is one example. At one point in time, WebSphere Commerce used to be the gold standard...
Sep 07, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 379
Send us Fan Mail ERP systems get a bad rap for being biased toward manufacturing. So manufacturers must feel comfortable using the mainstream ERP systems out there. Right? Well, at least that's not true for job shops. Job shops are unique in the way they think and work. They have a tendency to feel that they have unique business processes and workflow that require them to use a unique ERP system. But if you review the ERP systems that job shops typically appreciate, you will begin to notice a tr...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 378
Send us Fan Mail Recent economic events have taught us that Supply Chain is much deeper than most people think. These events, regardless of whether macro- or micro-economic, have the potential to throw off Supply Chain planning. And it requires careful calibration and cross-functional collaboration. So the Supply Chain professionals have data they need to take preventive measures to ensure that you are prepared for Supply Chain disruptions before it is too late. In today's episode, our guest, Mi...
Sep 05, 2022•40 min•Ep. 377
Send us Fan Mail Most companies would rather give a product for free than worry about reverse logistics. Especially when the cost of the supply chain may be higher than the product itself. By the way, reverse logistics is not as simple as printing a shipping label and sending it to your customer. It could include getting a product to your facility and then recycling it or sending it to the vendor for repair. Managing these transactions could be even more difficult when multiple systems might be ...
Sep 01, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 376
Send us Fan Mail The debate about whether a platform should be more business vs. developer-friendly is classic. Even the platforms that might claim to be friendly for business users might struggle with aesthetically pleasing interfaces. But Episerver takes a very different approach with their rich CMS that is already integrated with several ERP platforms popular in the industrial space. The B2B space also has very different needs with customer-specific pricing and the availability of products fo...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 375
Send us Fan Mail Most people might think of the distribution business as buy-and-sell. But distribution really gets really complex in the industrial space. You have challenges such as price and rebate management, buying groups, rush orders, and millions of SKUs. Unlike manufacturing, you might have very different planning for your warehouses, including push and pull-based replenishment. The bin structures are so complex that they may contain layers and layers of information to ensure that the wa...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 374
Send us Fan Mail Whether to go for iterative deployment or the big bang is always subject to debate. But one factor that is often missed is the number of issues you might get on the day of deployment. As well as, the number of resources that you may require to avoid and control the impact of business disruptions. Most consulting companies would often advise against massive rollouts. The smaller the deployment, the more manageable it is. But that may not always be possible due to the system archi...
Aug 29, 2022•46 min•Ep. 373
Send us Fan Mail What comes to mind when you think of RMA? Well, for me, I always feel that I have a fundamental right to return any product as I so please. However, if you think about the people and businesses that have to enable processes such as store credit, refund, sending the shipping labels, and getting the merchandise repaired, you might no longer feel like returning a product. Each of these processes could be so involved that it might require its own ERP systems for each area. Also, RMA...
Aug 25, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 372
Send us Fan Mail When people think of SAP Hybris, they are definitely not thinking of the modern stack such as React, headless, or PWA. But SAP Commerce has come a long way in its capabilities and stack. While it might not be as headless as some of the newer breeds of the tools, not many tools can match the enterprise-grade infrastructure capabilities of SAP Commerce Cloud. SAP Commerce Cloud has one of the most robust B2B features that other platforms can hardly match. And it is also a nice ble...
Aug 24, 2022•58 min•Ep. 371
Send us Fan Mail Sage 300, also known as Accpac, is the household name for many companies when they think of an ERP system. It has always been a powerful accounting package, especially for SMBs. It has also been very strong with construction, real estate, and field service verticals. Especially very deep functionality for unions, cost codes, retainage, submittals, and commitments. While most people might think that any package that might have project-centric functionality may be suitable for con...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 370
Send us Fan Mail It’s very hard to pinpoint the real cause of ERP implementation failures due to the number of moving pieces involved. Some people would always blame the software vendors while others would blame the system integrators. In reality, these factors might not contribute to the ERP implementation failure as you would think. But one factor that has a much higher chance of firing back is the customization of the software. The more you customize, the more cans of worms you will be openin...
Aug 22, 2022•49 min•Ep. 369
Send us Fan Mail Committed inventory and allocation are perhaps the most complex processes to master in the ERP world. But they are critical after a certain point in your growth. If you don't have committed inventory processes figured out, you might not be able to reserve for key customers. Every department may create ad-hoc arrangements to preserve its inventory. And that might result in inventory accuracy issues. But for the committed inventory processes to work, you must have your inventory i...
Aug 18, 2022•59 min•Ep. 368
Send us Fan Mail The whole idea of eCommerce and the web have always been making IT and programming easy for marketers. So easy that they don't need to learn coding to run eCommerce operations. But the world of headless seems to be taking the opposite approach. So is every vendor treating headless as the same? Not really. Also, should the headless experience always be based on React? Probably not. Why should a technology trend be biased toward a specific tech? Also, React is not the only way to ...
Aug 17, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 367
Send us Fan Mail Before Microsoft started migrating all of their customers to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central and F&O, they had a similar strategy as Epicor or Infor, with several products in their portfolio targeted to specific industry verticals. In fact, they still sell products such as Microsoft SL. While they have announced the end of life for the SL product, some community members feel that the deadline is likely to be extended. They claim this as, in their opinion, Business Centra...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 366
Send us Fan Mail Most people underestimate the differences in taxes and localization and their implications on the ERP processes. Some countries may have requirements such as reporting on pollution or privacy standards. But countries such as Mexico have completely transformed their taxation system to prevent corruption and bribery in the market. This transformation, however, creates unique challenges for the companies implementing an ERP system as they not only need to comply with the admin over...
Aug 15, 2022•51 min•Ep. 365
Send us Fan Mail Shop floor scheduling is always the hottest debate in the ERP community. In fact, it is so complex that most SMB companies end up managing their scheduling on spreadsheets. Also, the problems are much worse when multiple systems might be involved in the architecture. They each might claim how inadequate the other system is. With no clear consensus on what works when it comes to scheduling. One of the problems often discussed on the root causes of scheduling is the number of exce...
Aug 11, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 364
Send us Fan Mail When it comes to enterprise platforms, it's hard to meet the expectations from all fronts: performance, customization, developer experience, and functionality. Most platforms can perhaps check a couple of these boxes. Salesforce Commerce Cloud might be able to check a lot of them. That's probably the reason it's the leading platform for enterprises. It has deep industry-specific capabilities in both B2B and B2C space. For example, localized OEM-managed sites for dealers. Or, a H...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 363
Send us Fan Mail Epicor Eclipse has a more loyal community than crypto and Metaverse. But why is that? Based on the amount of technological innovation happening, you would guess that any school grad might be able to write ERP software. Right? So then why do technologies such as Mainframe, AS400, and Epicor Eclipse still exist? Is it really because change is hard. But change is hard for whom? For companies that are using it or companies that are selling it? Or is it because customers are unwillin...
Aug 09, 2022•59 min•Ep. 362
Send us Fan Mail Automating a process is easy. But understanding which process is the right candidate for automation is more difficult than most people think. Also, not every process is the right candidate to be hosted inside an ERP. By the same token, not every process can be as ad-hoc as RPA. There is one category that is in between the enterprise-wide cemented processes of ERP and ad-hoc processes automated by RPA technologies. It’s called workflow automation. Workflow automation inherits app...
Aug 08, 2022•50 min•Ep. 361
Send us Fan Mail The bill of materials becomes complex when you might have multiple layers of costing and sub-assemblies. But you need to be at a different level when you might have co-products and by-products involved as part of your manufacturing process. The co-products can help you optimize your production process and allocate costs appropriately. The by-products can help you measure the yield percentages accurately. But unless your SKUs and BOMs replicate the physical production processes, ...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 360
Send us Fan Mail Most people might not even pay attention to the location in the digital world. We can hire workers from any country remotely. We can trade with most countries easily. But when it comes to eCommerce and ERP systems, location is still a huge factor. The solution from North America may not work well in Europe. The solution from Latin America might not work well in North America. There are challenges such as payment providers or taxation being different. But even if a platform may s...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 359
Send us Fan Mail Most businesses take a reactive approach to their banking needs. They are likely to default to the bank that has the lowest fee. Also, they might have several exposure points for attackers to get access to your accounts. But does the lowest fee always mean the best strategy for your business? What if someone gets unauthorized access to your account and drains all the funds? Well, you will be able to get your money back. But it might take several months. And during these months, ...
Aug 01, 2022•52 min•Ep. 358
