Immo Böhm
8 July 2011
column
Here in Johannesburg it is freezing at the moment. Two days ago, when I arrived here on an early plane from Windhoek, it was so overcast and cold I thought we were landing in Norway! Take me back to Windhoek I thought at least there the sun shines! But no, no such luck. So I went on to do my speech at the events we had planned for Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Some of you will already know that we are launching a new product, Sage ERP X3, which takes us into the age of ERP 3, or third generation ERP. Now what is third generation ERP you might ask? Well, it’s a lot of things older ERP systems are not! So let me share with you some of the things that make up the third generation of ERP systems over the next couple of weeks.
Maybe before I start, just a note that nearly all ERP systems, well, at least the ones that are still being actively developed, and even some smaller accounting systems, will start to offer the features and concepts you are about to learn about in the next few weeks.
There are many of these concepts, and I touched on Visual Processes and embedded Business Intelligence already. Those are but better ways to have the system talk to the user. So third generation ERP is what we call «User Centric ERP». It’s all about the user. And not only about the classical ERP user, someone that punches away on the system all day, but rather this extends to everyone that is now connected to your system in some way.
ERP 3 promises to reach not only internal users, as ERP 1 did, or extend only to suppliers and customers, like ERP 2 did with B2B, CRM and SCM. (Business to Business electronic commerce, customer relations management and supply chain management in non geek speak. Instead, ERP 3 promises to connect us with everyone out there. Think of your fans (or, if your service or product is not that well received, your «anti-fans» (and there I thought I had invented a new word – the anti-fan, but a quick Google search revealed that I am not the first with this idea, what a pity, it is such a nice word.
Well, anyway, I will find my new word someday. Let’s rather look at the promise of ERP 3. So how do we connect to fans and anti-fans? Social media of course. Everyone and his dog are now using Facebook and Twitter. So much so, that it does make sense for businesses to use these tools to lure new customers, offer customer support or most importantly, monitor the conversations about ones brand that are happening out there. In the old days, people would talk about your brand around the braai fire or on the golf course.
They still do the same now, but probably with everyone also being online on their smartphones at the same time, tweeting whatever was deliberated between boerewors and sosaties. So companies have the unique opportunity to monitor these conversations. And how better than putting an automated summary of these tweets on your dashboard in a little widget. Remember my last article? Need to keep track of the latest analyst opinion about your company? Put a widget on your dashboard. Need to keep track of the latest newspaper articles about your latest projects, put a widget on your dashboard. You get the idea. Let the information find you! Rather than the other way around!
Now that is not all why not have your widgets interact with one another? Drag one onto the other and they automatically relate to each other to give you more meaningful content and let you see patterns that were not clear before. How is that for being in control of your company all of a sudden?
Much more to explore on this so until next time then, remember – keep it (Afresh.
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