Brands and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
I’ve been thinking lately a lot about how an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system can effect your brand. I really enjoyed a recent Blog on the 1to1 Blogsite, published by Mila D’Antonio. Mila cited a passage in Dick Martin’s book, Rebuilding Brand America, where Dick said,

“………(brand) has to be easy to understand and flexible enough to modulate in a wide variety of interactions with a large number of different audiences. Most important, it can’t simply be something you stick at the end of an ad or on the side of a building. It has to be the ‘golden thread’ that runs through every internal process and through every interactions with customers. And your promise can’t be primarily rational It has to operate on the deeper level of emotions and feelings.”

What a great thought provoking paragraph.

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ERP Should Make You Free
The very essence of a well designed ERP system is to free you from the dependencies of making all the mundane decisions over and over again and have the confidence that your system is helping you to run your business in the most efficient and profit producing manner known to man. I just finished reading an excellent article by Briony Smith of www.itbusiness.ca and it was a revelation, particularly for me as a person in the ERP business and providing ERP systems, consulting, and implementation services. The article is compelling right from the start with the following quote;

“A recently released survey of Technology Evaluation Centre  newsletter subscribers sponsored by Sliedrecht, Netherlands-based ERP company Agresso found that, out of the 900 respondents, 70 per cent feel their ERP systems put them at a disadvantage.”

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I Want My Data When I Want It, Chapter One
It was great to see some of my old colleagues from the Energy Pipeline Industry last night. Ever since my work with DATAP Systems, Valmet Automation, PRCI, PIG, TechCorr, El Paso,  Scientific Surveys Ltd, and many other pipeline operators, service companies, organizations, and consultants, I have heard the same thing over and over again, “I just want my data, when I want it, and I want to be able to find it quickly……”, there are more “ands” to add here, but this is chapter one of this line of thought.

The pipeline business is data intensive with data flowing from SCADA, shipping and transport, custody transfer, integrity management and pigging, security (videos, satellite photos, etc.), and knowledge based information.

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Portable ERP is a Beautiful Thing!
 “I just want to cut down on the morning smoking, coffee drinking, and generally wasting precious time every day”, that quote was one of the main factors in the ERP decision of a successful construction service businessman. He just wanted to be the best in our city and beyond and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he needed to change the way they were doing business. So he built a custom ERP system that worked for his industry, and then built a portable version of the ERP system and never looked back.

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