LEAN your Business - ERP as a Tool

A recent article in Industry Week stated, "For many large and midsize manufacturers, the challenge of enabling the corporatewide enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to mesh with their lean initiatives on the plant floor requires a delicate balance."

In order to get the most out of your employees and resources it is critical that everyone is able to collaborate around common principles. One main objective of implementing business management software is to have an integrated solution where data is generally enter once, actions create further actions (think supply chain management) and processes are automated - all LEAN Concepts. In order to accomplish this objective your management solution must utilize a robust relational database which allows for many users to be accessing and updating information simultaneously while providing security and data integrity. Further the database and the application work hand in hand to manage users, privileges and transactions.

The key differentiator of business management software solutions is the capability of the solution to be a true multi-user application.  There simply is no such thing as an enterprise class integrated business management and accounting solution that is not designed to be used simultaneously by multiple individual users. By far the leading accounting software package used by startup businesses is Quickbooks, mainly because its cheap and easy to use, but Quickbooks is not a multi-user application. (Yes, the Enterprise Edition is and by definition the online version is -sorta, but that's not the point of this post). "Sharing" an application is not the same as having multiple users.

So when your business has grown and you realize its time to leverage technology to increase your business's efficiency and ability to service your customers - start you ERP search with those solutions that provide multiple user functionality as a fundamental concept.

Learn more about multi-user open source accounting and business management software at:
www.opensurge.com