ERP software

By David EssexSpecial to GCNnterprise resource planning software, long used mostly by manufacturers and retailers to manage supply chains and business processes, is becoming a staple in the public sector.Freed from the constraints of the year 2000 repair efforts, agencies are setting their sights on electronic government. But to offer electronic self-service to constituents, they must first put their internal processes in order. With so many legacy applications to deal with, officials are finding the one-database, one-application model of ERP holds ample promise as the best integration solution.The process of choosing an ERP package is complicated by the large number of applications and integration issues with outside software, and by ERP's intimate relationship with the efficiency of existing policies and procedures. It requires long, hard analysis'often performed by a consultant'and a willingness to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, even several million dollars, on a far-reaching system that is likely to remain in place for many years.ERP packages consist of modules, each handling a different business process, that are all linked and have a common look and feel. In the government sector, popular modules are human resources, financials and supply-chain management. More recently, customer relationship management modules have been put to use for automated constituent services.Within each module are applications for handling the nuts and bolts of daily work, such as general ledgers, purchase orders and tax calculators. Documents are linked with workflow tools that direct them to the right people in the chain of command. Where necessary, forms adhere to government specifications, such as those of the Standard General Ledger, the Prompt Payment Act and a range of Office of Budget and Management reports.And, in some cases, the products meet the requirements of the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program, which sets financial product requirements for government agencies and certifies products through testing. This guide does not list prices for ERP products because so many factors affect the ultimate expense for an ERP deployment. The price will vary widely depending on the size of the installation, the modules chosen and any volume discounts.Vendors and industry analysts say two trends influence ERP design. The biggest, not surprisingly, is the Internet. Long-time ERP vendors, particularly PeopleSoft Inc. and SAP America Inc., have been racing during the past two years to Web-enable their older client-server architectures.Easy-to-use browsers and fast, inexpensive deployment are democratizing ERP, making applications available to more people in government and, ultimately, to their constituents.ERP packages are beginning to tie into virtual marketplaces where agencies can purchase supplies more cheaply. And the rise of application service providers has affected ERP, giving organizations the option of avoiding installation and hardware costs by outsourcing the applications.'You're really changing the way that work happens with the new Web architecture,' said Tom Ferrando, vice president of PeopleSoft integrator Acuent Inc. of Parsippany, N.J.Self-service is the other wave influencing ERP design. It enables agency employees and constituents to get information and make requests'for example, a federal employee changing a beneficiary designation. Oracle Corp. has saved $1 billion by moving to self-service applications internally, said Steve Perkins, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Federal.Web portals also have come to ERP, with vendors marketing them as affordable gateways to public access. Besides improving constituent service, portals can save on labor and infrastructure costs that would otherwise go to servicing inquiries.The newest trend in ERP is wireless access, which lets constituents access self-service features from cellular and Web phones. Perkins said wireless access could potentially speed up logistics operations and reporting by government workers.The major companies in the public sector are Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP, with J.D. Edwards World Solutions Co. and Computer Associates International Inc. strong second-tier players. Numerous other companies offer a smattering of modules, but only the big three sell most of the components needed to run a government agency. J.D. Edwards offers only state and municipal products but plans to enter the federal market soon.Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP already have extensive lists of public-sector customers. The Navy, for example, recently bought SAP's R/3 ERP package. The Mint installed PeopleSoft's Supply Chain and Financial Management for Education and Government modules in 1998 and 1999 as part of a broader effort to modernize its financial, manufacturing and mail-order systems. And Oracle announced in August that the Veterans Affairs Department will over the next year test the company's U.S. Federal Financials module, integrated with an Oracle procurement application, server and database.The product list includes companies that have comprehensive ERP offerings tailored for government. Noticeably missing is Baan USA Inc. of Herndon, Va. Once an ERP leader, the Netherlands-based Baan Co. faced financial difficulties and underwent a reorganization before being acquired in August by Invensys PLC of London. Industry experts say Baan has no significant presence in the government market, and a former representative said the company is reining in its marketing efforts.Even with the field somewhat narrowed, how do you begin to decide? The only checklist items that count are a product's functions and whether they perform the mission-critical operations you need.Operating systems and hardware platforms are no longer concerns, company officials said, because nearly every product supports Microsoft Windows NT, several flavors of Unix and IBM AS/400.This is less true of the database that forms the backbone of every package. Oracle supports only Oracle'the company claims it has more than 75 percent of the government database market'while the other packages support Oracle and popular enterprise databases such as IBM DB/2 and Microsoft SQL Server.'Functionality rules,' said Dennis Byron, director of enterprise application research at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass. But he cautioned against expecting a single solution. 'No one does it all, so you always need another best-of-breed application,' he said. 'You just decide what you need to run your business, and you buy that."XXXSPLITXXX-