After all those marketing smokes, campaigns, fancy brochures and other stuffs – it will now come to actual solutions that are really essential to the end customers. Please find time to read this post.
I think this is a much awaited topic/subject for SyteLine’s competition and evaluators globally; and for me, this is a hard subject to write as well.
Some of the information in this post can be seen in SyteLine7.com forums so this is not really a secret. This is where the power of the Internet comes to place and evaluators take very huge advantage.
To add, I also feel that those online evaluation tools that you can find in the Internet are rigged (in my opinion – maybe not all). ERP Vendors who pay huge advertising money to that site are better positioned in their download materials – who knows? Bottom line, nothing beats face to face interaction with ERP Suppliers rather than fully relying on online tools specially if huge money/investment is at stake.
Ok, here we go.
Top 3 SyteLine KO’s:
1. SyteLine’s forms personalization is a very powerful tool that any user (if given access) can do. ALL you see in SyteLine is modifiable. Yes! This is true! Most of the time, users have a tons of wish lists that needs to be served, imagine if all those wish lists can be served by themselves (if given authorization) and not by the vendor or their IT department? With just seconds of navigation, users can add fields, modify the actual look and feel, combine 2 or more forms into 1, create field triggers without the need for heavy programming. Imagine the lowest possible TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of never ever to call the ERP supplier if you need to change ANYTHING in the system? Imagine all the remaining deficiency of the system can already be done inhouse – to make it 100% fit!
Note: .NET based ERP Solutions can easily do this. Unless those solutions were already updated and offer such functionalities. Please verify to the vendors concerned.
2. SyteLine’s easy interaction with spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel or open source office applications – please refer to this post.
Note: .NET based ERP Solutions can easily do this. Unless those solutions were already updated and offer such functionalities. Please verify to the vendors concerned.
3. SyteLine’s Constraint Based Planning and Scheduling engine a.k.a. – APS – Advance Planning and Scheduling. Now, this is a knock-out! This is where SyteLine’s domain expertise comes to play. In almost all cases, ERP Solutions only have MRP. Do you know what’s the difference between MRP (Material Resource Planning) and APS (Advance Planning and Scheduling)? here is some of the reasons on why you need to know APS and why you dont hear APS from Non-SyteLine Providers.
a.) MRP uses finite planning while APS uses constraint-based planning even at order entry.
b.) MRP can only check inventory (available-to-promise) but if no stock is available, you have to wait for the MRP run before you can know if you could truly deliver an order.
c.) MRP normally runs at night because you need to freeze inventory (no transaction happening) which means you will not have immediate information of changes to the plans, normally the information will be available the following day already.
d.) APS will check both inventory and capacity, presenting the feasibility of fulfilling a requested order at order entry-point.
e.) Distribution and manufacturing companies nowadays need APS for them to be competitive since at present JIT or Kanban is a must practice at present.
For a Non-SyteLine Solution to be able to compete, they will need to add systems such as those coming from Adexa, or if evaluating SAP – they need to add APO (Advance Planning and Ordering), i2 Technologies – Rhythm, Manugistics – Manugistics supply chain suite, Numetrix – Schedulex, Oracle’s – Oracle APS.
SyteLine’s APS is already integrated in its core system – this is not an add-on meaning – no integration problems – all real-time and in its natural coding.
This is where SAP, Oracle, QAD, Exact, Scala, Microsoft Dynamics (Navision) or any other ERP provider find very hard time to answer, maybe because competency of APS is very hard to find; SyteLine’s APS comes natural in its regular implementations. I just don’t know why Non-SyteLine providers find this complicated.
To know more about APS, please read “The Goal” maybe the second edition is retitled “Theory of Constraints” by “Eliyahu M. Goldratt“. – This was suggested by an APS expert/friend, he is in Malaysia.
