$16bn health agency managed finances with Excel spreadsheet.
It's just one of 6,000 apps that New Zealand thinks might be best tamed with ERP
It's just one of 6,000 apps that New Zealand thinks might be best tamed with ERP
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It's just one of 6,000 apps that New Zealand thinks might be best tamed with ERP
How does erotic role play help tame Excel?
For a non-joke answer. ERP in this context means Enterprise Resource Planning. It basically allows you to do everything an enterprise requires with one software system instead of using several different ones.
And they all suck ass
It's because you're supposed to customize them, not use as-is. We've had a lot of happy customers. Some send us gifts! But for the first year or maybe even couple of years, you probably pay more to your partner for implementation, customizations and advice than to the ERP developer for licensing.
ERPs aren't for every company, different ERPs work best for different companies and different partners themselves have their own specializations. The one I work through (used to work for, but now I have my own company and just contract for them), does small to medium sized production companies. Think 5-200 employees usually. The ERP we work with is meant to cover every imaginable use case - which is why it doesn't have enough depth. We add a bunch of stuff that isn't there OOTB, sometimes remove things in default modules, etc.
But first you NEED an ERP partner to make the most of it. At ours the CEO is also the biggest salesman. He's not afraid to tell you if he doesn't think it's a good fit. A bad partner will still try to sell you and that's going to end up in disappointment for everyone.
Setting up an ERP can also be completely botched if the company's representatives don't fully grasp all the functions needed. What I've been going through as a customer of an ERP suite is that the "stars" of the software don't actually understand the other 50% of functions outside their department. That remaining 50% is distributed among 4 other departments, so representation wasn't exactly prioritized. Add in high turnover circa 2021 and the whole thing is logistical nightmare that finally at least has a goal in sight.
The other underlying issue is the existing forms usually lack what we need and have too much fluff. Once our ERP partner modifies it, the ERP developer drops all support for that form. We get zero help when it gets mystery glitches.
So yeah, I can get why some places say fuck it and stick with excel. Half the workforce knows excel well enough to write what they need. Take 10% of them to format and lock down spreadsheets so the other 50% of the workforce can just fill in boxes and pick drop downs. It just works.
All that to say, I both expect more form a Healthcare company but also am not surprised.
Yeah, the requirements should also be clear - or at least clear before any sort of implementation starts. Defining the requirements is a large part of what our consultants do and the more experienced ones know how to ask questions to get perspectives of people other than the "stars". Takes months usually to get things to where us developers can get started on anything. We've built some hella cool shit for some customers but then you look at the git history and realize that it took the customer over a YEAR to go live. They must've easily invested six figures getting this ERP just right for their needs. Automatic imports from other software they use, lots of customizations, including some brand new in-erp apps. They're loving it so far. But you don't get this without considering a bunch of people's needs.
It sounds like JDE. My company uses it, but they don't even use all of the built in features. They do a bunch of stuff manually that they could just do with the software they're paying for.
Odoo actually. You more or less can't use all the features, there's too many. That doesn't mean it's the best ERP, it just tries to be a true generalist, which means it needs lots of customizations usually.
Ta, I was curious.
I would also like to know more.
It let's your accounts blow off steam so they use excel better instead of filling the account ting sheets with dirty messages
