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5 Ways Technology Consulting Firms Benefit from ERP Partnerships

October 13, 2021 By Tim Phelan

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, technology consulting firms are vital in helping organizations adapt to digital transformation. One crucial aspect of this process is enterprise resource planning (ERP), which enables companies to manage core business functions efficiently. Technology consulting firms can form strategic partnerships with ERP publishers to enhance their ERP offerings. This blog post will explore five ways technology consulting firms can benefit from these partnerships.

1. Access to Cutting-Edge Technology

By partnering with an ERP publisher, technology consulting firms gain access to the latest advancements in ERP technology. This enables them to offer their clients innovative solutions and stay ahead of the competition. Close collaboration with the ERP publisher allows technology consulting firms to gain insights into the product roadmap, future enhancements, and upcoming features. This knowledge helps them provide comprehensive and up-to-date advice to their clients.

2. Expert Training and Support

Working closely with an ERP publisher provides technology consulting firms with expert training and support. The ERP publisher offers in-depth training sessions, webinars, and certification programs for consultants, enabling them to enhance their skills and stay updated with the evolving ERP landscape. Additionally, direct support from the ERP publisher ensures that consultants can quickly resolve any technical issues or challenges faced during implementation or support activities, leading to a seamless client experience.

3. Marketing and Sales Support

A partnership with an ERP publisher allows technology consulting firms to leverage the publisher’s marketing and sales resources. Consulting firms can reach a broader audience, generate more leads, and increase brand visibility by collaborating on marketing efforts. The ERP publisher can provide sales guidance, collateral, and access to potential clients, strengthening the consulting firm’s sales capabilities. This collaboration helps attract new clients and expand the consulting firm’s customer base.

4. Enhancing Consulting Portfolio

Technology consulting firms can enhance their portfolio through an ERP partnership by offering a comprehensive range of ERP services. This enables them to meet the diverse needs of their clients, whether it be ERP implementation, customization, integration, or post-implementation support. With access to various ERP modules and add-ons, consulting firms can tailor solutions according to their client’s specific requirements, ultimately providing more value.

5. Competitive Advantage

Partnering with an ERP publisher gives technology consulting firms a competitive edge in the market. By aligning themselves closely with a renowned ERP brand, consulting firms can build a reputation as trusted experts in ERP technology. This association enhances their credibility and differentiates them from other consulting firms. Furthermore, technology consulting firms can capitalize on the ERP publisher’s brand reputation, leveraging it to attract new clients and secure long-term business partnerships.

In conclusion, forming partnerships with ERP publishers offers numerous benefits for technology consulting firms. The advantages are manifold, from accessing cutting-edge technology and receiving expert training to leveraging marketing and sales support, enhancing consulting portfolios, and gaining a competitive advantage. These partnerships empower consulting firms to deliver exceptional ERP services, stay at the forefront of industry advancements, and ultimately drive business growth.

Filed Under: Alliances, Business, Business Technology, Entrepreneur, Technology

Boosting Efficiency by Building Stronger Technology Alliances

September 3, 2020 By Tim Phelan

In today’s business landscape, it’s more important than ever for organizations to have strong partners with complementary products and services when they embark on an ERP initiative. In fact, 82% of IT decision makers agree that technology alliances are essential to help companies achieve their business goals. But finding partners can be challenging. Here are some tips for making the most of your next alliance.

The biggest challenge when forming a technology alliance is managing the expectations of each party. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what each party expects, then it can be difficult to ensure that everyone is aligned with their goals and objectives.

To begin with, make sure that all parties involved have a clear understanding of what they expect out of this partnership. This may include:

  • What do you want from this partnership?
  • Why are you doing this together?

Once everyone agrees on those details, determine how much time and effort they’re willing to put into forming this new relationship. For example, if one company has more resources than another (elderly employees who live in an area where there aren’t any other tech jobs), perhaps it would make sense for them to invest more in developing custom software solutions while another could focus on improving existing systems through third party vendors instead; however some businesses may not want either option because either way would require significant financial commitment from its employees who would otherwise be supporting themselves solely by working at home or freelance jobs throughout town instead!

There must be a clear understanding of ERP strategies and success criteria at the outset, which includes realistic timelines and a well articulated business case.

The first step in developing an effective alliance strategy is to set expectations with your partners, understand their needs and then provide them with information that will help them achieve those goals. This can be done by identifying what you hope to achieve through this relationship. Once you have determined these goals, it’s important to follow up with detailed estimates as well as an action plan for achieving them within a certain timeframe (i.e., six months).

Ideally, an alliance would begin with an actual project that one or both of the companies are participating in. This provides an opportunity to test compatibility, while building credibility with potential customers.

The first step is to determine what exactly you want from your partnership: do you need help developing a new product? Do you need help implementing a new ERP system? If so and if this is something that both parties can benefit from and learn from each other’s experience, then there’s nothing wrong with starting small by implementing some basic functionality first (such as creating accounts).

From the outset it is important to be open about one’s motivation for the alliance. Is it strategic or tactical? Are there any areas that are off limits?

The first step in building a strong relationship with your partners is having an honest dialogue about what they need from you, which will help them know if they can trust you as a partner or not. The most important thing here is making sure everyone understands where each side stands on this issue and why certain decisions were made before moving forward with an agreement on how things will work out in practice.

For maximum success, each organization should align its ERP resources by specialty or role. This helps to provide consistency regardless of who is involved in the project. For example, it may be helpful to assign a partner manager who understands how each partner works; he or she can also serve as a liaison for handling issues that arise.

As you are working on your partnership strategy, be clear about one’s motivation for the alliance: does it help with sales? Or is it about other business benefits (like reduced costs)? If there are multiple motivations at play—or if multiple parties have different incentives—then expect some challenges along the way that can make things difficult and slow down progress toward achieving mutual goals.

It’s important to maintain open communication between ERP teams and vendors throughout all phases of an alliance, from post-sales support through development, testing and deployment. It’s also critical that you avoid any potential miscommunication that could lead to a breakdown in trust.

Open communication is crucial because it helps prevent misunderstandings or disputes over who’s responsible for what. This can be especially important when there are multiple partners involved in an alliance—it’s easy for things to get muddled up if one partner isn’t clear about its responsibilities or expectations when working together with another partner on a project or initiative.

The importance of building strong technology alliances is more than ever before. As organizations continue to face increased competition, they need to have partners with complementary products and services when they embark on an ERP initiative.

When you have a strong partner, it can help you reduce costs and increase efficiency by sharing best practices across the business. It’s also important for your organization to align its goals with those of its partners because if there are misalignments in terms of vision or strategy then it could lead to conflict between the two parties which will ultimately hurt both parties involved in this alliance (i.e., no one wins).

To ensure that all stakeholders are aligned, open communication should be encouraged at all times between both parties involved so that any issues can be resolved quickly without causing any harmful effects towards either party involved in this alliance (i..e., no one loses).

The benefits of a strong technology alliance can be significant for both parties involved. By aligning business resources, organizations can accomplish more in less time with fewer resources. This is especially true for companies that may not have the financial resources to build their own ERP system or need help developing an existing one. The benefits are equally shared by vendors who get access to new markets and customers while providing exceptional value at competitive prices.

Filed Under: Alliances, Business Technology

5 Reasons You Should Move Your Business to the Cloud

July 15, 2019 By Tim Phelan

cloud-migration

Small businesses are beginning to choose cloud computing more than ever before today. It’s for good reason. Upfront costs tend to be low, access to cloud data is available anywhere, and there’s less risk of data loss when there is a crisis. If your company is still considering going with cloud computing, here are five important benefits why you should choose to make the move.

It’s more flexible and allows for effortless collaboration

When your company moves to the cloud, you get a host of software options to perform virtually any business task with. For example, a friend of mine who owns a specialty pet supply store uses the Shopify cloud app as her point of sale system as well as performing everything from inventory management to e-commerce on one interface.

ERP systems, like Sage Business Cloud delivers a full-business lifecycle solution from financials, through inventory, production management, people management, and distribution.  When you move to the cloud, you have the choice of working with your business processes in more flexible ways than before.

You can easily scale up when your business grows

Most small businesses plan to grow into bigger businesses one day. Growing, however, can be a problem when you use software solutions that you have brought together in-house. When you move to the cloud, every software-as-a-service (SaaS) app made available to you should be inherently scalable. It is built from the ground up to be scaled up or down.

Cloud migration increases data security and disaster recovery capability

From data security to concerns about the ability to recover from fires or floods, small businesses are usually not well protected. When disaster strikes, nearly 40% of small businesses never reopen. Others take as long as three months to recover. Storing all your data on the cloud not only means greater security, but it also gives you the ability to get to your data even when the physical location of your office is inaccessible. In addition, using hosted voice cloud solutions means that calls to your company proceed as always, even when connections to your office are interrupted.

The cloud frees your IT department to work on other things

When you employ cloud-based IT solutions, you take a huge load off your in-house IT department. Freed of routine, everyday tasks such as keeping systems running and answering support questions, your IT department is likely to have more time to innovate for your company.

You save money on up-front costs

Whether you’re a small or medium business, moving your business processes to the cloud can mean saving the money that you would invest in software and services in initial setup, configuration, and training. It was found in a study by The Aberdeen Group that organizations using SaaS ERP typically achieved ROI faster than companies with an on-premise ERP solution. You are also likely to gain access to tools and resources that you wouldn’t normally have if you had to buy everything that you used.

When your company takes advantage of the efficiencies of cloud business solutions, you gain direct access to the best tools available without having to worry about scalability in the future. You get better resilience in the event of a crisis, and your IT team can do more for your company than simply deal with everyday problems as they occur. Moving your business to the cloud can be a smart move.

Filed Under: Business Technology Tagged With: cloud computing, cloud migration, disaster recovery, erp

Blockchain – Antiquated as the Block and the Chain?

January 16, 2019 By Tim Phelan

Has blockchain lost its momentum? Have the promises made no longer within reach? Will blockchain now go down in the annuls as the want-to-be that was merely a now seemingly defunct cryptocurrency play? Many experts are saying just that, that the reality of blockchain will go down as hype. McKinsey & Company posits “Across its many applications, blockchain arguably remains stuck at stage 1 in the lifecycle (with a few exceptions). The vast majority of proofs of concept (POCs) are in pioneering mode (or being wound up) and many projects have failed to get to Series C funding rounds. We are still awaiting that promised technologic revolution.”

McKinsey & Company

To me one of the largest hurdles from the start was a lack of organization and unifying design principles for blockchain. Like many “open-source” software and technologies, the lack of these guiding principles create a double-edged sword: the beauty of unbridled creativity applied to addressing, overcoming, expanding and improving functionality, elegance, and effectiveness of a solution; the boundarylessness and lack of protocols that lead to chaos in the ecosystem, in-fighting amongst differing philosophies and approaches bringing chasms and diluted solution sets, and worst yet a loss of ability and belief in the technology ever making it to the initial visions of grandeur. I suppose we could always ask the Novell administrators or RedHat programmers their opinion! (Just for the record, I believe that regardless of market forces and technological piracy, Novell and its NDS Tree were the most elegant network structure and protocols ever copied and stolen)

Yet, the reports of blockchain’s death have been greatly exaggerated. (Mark Twain 1897). Interestingly today a VP of Technology for a $300M+ national firm asked me if I had any documentation or articles regarding a Tier-1 ERP and blockchain. I did. Maybe taking a 50,000-foot view of the benefits it was to have delivered would be worth a smell-test:”

  • Decentralized
  • Resilient
  • Scalable
  • Secure and Auditable
  • Autonomous
  • Transparent
  • Quick
  • Economic
  • Increased Capacity

See “BeingCrypto”

Like Samuel Clemens’ overstated death, blockchain is alive and kicking. Our Dubaian, grandeur-building, wealthy, trendsetters, and ultimate one-ups-men are aspiring to become the first blockchain powered city by 2020. In this article Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr shares “Dubai has established itself, and in record time, as a global destination for innovators and entrepreneurs in the Blockchain industry. Guided by the vision of our leadership, the emirate has become synonymous with bravely embracing avant-garde technologies and utilizing them to create an advanced, connected and seamless urban experience for its residents and visitors.”. Further, all major ERP/MRP/Financial Software Developers are planning the integration of blockchain because “the value achieved through integrating blockchain with ERP systems comes not by creating and porting new information into the distributed ledger, but by drawing existing data from enterprise systems and being able to tightly control with whom it is shared” per a COMPUTERWORLD report.

Rather than loss of momentum or a death spiral, maybe blockchain is morphing, adjusting, and potentially finding its initial niche that is beneficial, valuable, and sustainable. Or maybe it is as big of a fad as Al Gore’s Internet. Who knows???

Filed Under: Blockchain, Business Technology

5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Business Intelligence (BI) Initiative

February 13, 2016 By Tim Phelan

Gartner stated that over a third of business intelligence initiatives fail. Implementing a BI tool properly can deliver actionable information out of the seemingly endless amounts of data enabling organizations to be more agile, get to market quicker, and to save time by managing by exception. This can become a competitive edge, particularly in industries that are fast-changing.  BI is not an expensive undertaking though, and the better prepared you are the more likely success will come on time and in budget.  Here are 5 tips that can make the difference between competitive edge and failure:

  1. Be clear on the desired results – Too often entrepreneurs and executives get bogged down in the power of the data sources, how wonderful it is going to be to have so many desperate data sets from different systems normalized and at their fingertips. While planning the data architecture is certainly important, it can quickly eat up the entire budget.  Think backwards from the finish: what information do you want and how do you want to see it?  With this information your internal IT Department or outside consulting firm can then best design the data structure to goal, not to be all encompassing of any goal you may ever have.
  2. Get references, good and bad – If you are using a professional services organization, rest assured they should be versed well enough in the technology to make it sound like your initiative is right in their wheelhouse at a technical level you may not be as knowledgeable. It is imperative that you have the ability to talk to other managers, executives, or business owners like yourself that have had success with the firm.  I stress managers/executives/business owners because talking to an IT professional can lead to an accurate and wondrous story of a data warehouse that provides absolutely no business value.  Be sure to speak with the person who benefits from the work.  Because technology by its nature is sometimes not as reliable as one would like, it is also important to speak with a client that faced major challenges in their implementation. Granted, nobody is going to give you a terrible reference.  At least though you will get a sense of how the firm deals with unanticipated challenges in time, budget, or expectation setting.  A quick word to the wise: unless you have a segment of your IT team dedicated to data administration, reporting and has implemented a BI solution many times before, outsource it.  The disruption from normal duties and potential of losing someone who otherwise is an excellent team member over perceived cost savings that may never materialize.
  3. Chose a flexible platform – There are thousands of BI platforms to choose from that are for small business, mid-sized business, enterprise, industry specific, etc.  Connectivity will largely depend on your current data sources: accounting, production, marketing, CRM, project costing, time & attendance, and so on.  Be sure to ascertain how the final information or dashboard will be delivered to you. Important questions include: Is it shareable (can I send a file to a colleague)? Is it device dependent (can I see it from my laptop and my iPhone)? Ultimately, how you and your teams work will determine what the best option is.  Beware of solution specific clients.  While sometimes unavoidable, it is always preferable to use non-proprietary viewers.
  4. Proof of Concept – If possible, a proof of concept is an excellent way to see what and how you are going to get on a small scale.  Often, you can negotiate a fixed price that will go towards the full deployment thereby not costing additional.  Even if it is an additional cost, it is a way for you to mitigate the risk of not being happy after a much larger investment.  This is also a viable option if your internal IT is leading the project. Find a small, quickly achievable key performance indicator (KPI) and run that piece as a mini project and upon approval you move forward with the larger project.
  5. Solid Project Management – Strong project management (ideally from the consulting firm and your organization) is be the best way to ensure that expectations are met and challenges overcome in a timely and mutually beneficial manner.  This includes sign off on scope, milestone targets, billing milestones, reporting and feedback procedures, and change of scope documentation and procedures.  Make sure that whether you are using an outside firm or tackling your BI project internally that you have a project lead who is responsible for monitoring and reporting back relevant details, issues and accomplishments.

BI transforms the way we think of information.  Executed properly, key information is put in the hands of those who can act on it quicker, interpret trends, and hopefully keep the organization a step ahead of competition.  Take your time before committing resources to the project.  Follow these guideline and find a good BI provider to partner with and you will be amazed that you ever waded through those seas of reports that monopolize so much time.  Good luck and make it a great day!

Filed Under: Business, Business Technology, Entrepreneur

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Tech in Perspective is your guide to living a balanced life with technology. Authored by tech-life evangelist and former CEO/COO Tim Phelan.

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