Gone are the days when eCommerce meant simply setting up a website as a virtual billboard; presenting static information about your business's brick-and-mortar existence. Today, an eCommerce-optimized presence on the Internet is a billboard and also a welcome mat, a catalog, a shopping cart, a payment processing system, a merchandise returns authorizer, and an assessor of customer satisfaction. Companies truly interested in succeeding on-line must merge all of these purposes into what feels like a robust but seamless experience for visitors to the 'storefront'. Behind the scenes, integration means that fulfillment of secured orders will be completed quickly and effectively, including allocation, picking, packing, shipping, billing, and collection.

Innovation in the business world is often perceived as opportunity by those doing - and benefiting from - the innovating. For other businesses that change unwillingly impacts, however, innovation often feels more like painful disruption to an already risky status quo. Our little region of the Pacific Northwest is the proud home of Powell's City of Books, the world's largest independent bookstore. We're especially enamored with it now that online and digital enterprises have made similar brick and mortar bookshops such a rarity. For Amazon and Apple, this transformation in how we buy and read books is opportunity. For Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, Crown Books, and many others, the rapid dismantling of their longstanding business models could only be interpreted as disruption.

Inaction in the face of options is a form of decision-making. Yet in business, doing nothing when presented with alternatives to solve a problem typically just delays negative consequences. While you procrastinate, the issue continues to grow and compromise the company's agility. As people who each day see the market advantage of keeping software up-to-date, we often offer this advice: The lack of making a decision to replace or upgrade your current software platform from a legacy system is possibly having a negative impact on the future success of your organization. Unfortunately, amidst routine and habit, it's hard to recognize that one's company is coping with - rather than overcoming - its internal challenges. Likewise, it's difficult to quantitatively demonstrate the loss created by taking no action.

An Enterprise Resource Planning system with integrated ecommerce is essential for business growth in highly competitive marketplaces like the present one. Both your customers and your business profit when all of your ecommerce and logistical functions connect - and they both suffer delays and higher costs when they don't. Learn how tight integration gives the advantage to your business in our free whitepaper.

Perhaps you've read some posts from our blog's Enterprise Resource Planning system selection series, and several other articles published by experts in identifying the right ERP solution for certain business needs, and even more tips from more sources that are familiar to your discipline. And perhaps you're now immersed in more information than you realized was out there when you started looking. But you're diligently combing through it all. Because you don't want to get this wrong. Selecting an ERP system is a big, expensive decision; one that will have ramifications for your business - good or bad - for years to come. And so maybe you've started a spreadsheet that lists all the available benefits of the various ERP options you're finding, and you're categorizing those items and prioritizing the ones that your company needs most from a solution. And now you're listing the ERP systems that seem the most appealing so that you can compare them, hoping that you've collected a comprehensive list of features. STOP!!! We already did much of this for you. So here's a handy, customize-able benefit analysis checklist.

Suppliers have a lot to say about why their respective Enterprise Resource Planning software offerings are the best. Navigating through the wealth of competing information during the selection process can feel like cutting through a rain forest with a dull steak knife. Ultimately, your goal is not to find the best overall ERP system. Your goal is to find the right ERP system for your company. Here are 10 suggestions for organizing the chaos and allowing your team to make an intelligent decision.

Viewed from a high level, core functionality may seem very similar from one Enterprise Resource Planning system to the next. That surface appearance probably has some truth to it. However, further investigation will almost always prove that minor differences make one system ideal for a given organization and completely ineffective for another. Furthermore, ERP products are frequently offered in variations tailored to specific industries, and the quality of execution in bundling those features is crucial to their usability. Suppliers may know their products, but you know your business. Here are five aspects to consider in the quest for your ideal ERP system.

Selecting a well-matched Enterprise Resource Planning system can facilitate increased profitability and long-term health for your business. Selecting a poorly-matched system can have just the opposite impact. In an era where the right software can give you an edge against your competition, few decisions are so worthy of a systematic and rigorous process as auditing your ERP options. If your company is approaching this process - or even just getting started in it - you'll want to read our next couple of blog posts dedicated to conducting a smart search and finding the solution that best meets your business needs.

Your Enterprise Resource Planning system is the heart of your business, and nobody looks forward to a heart transplant. However, if your current system is not supporting the needs of the business, limits your flexibility, or inhibits customer service, it may be time to evaluate your options. ERP system replacement is a monumental business decision that requires a serious commitment of time and resources. So how do you know if you should even be considering it?

Last week in her Sue's Views blog, Sue wrote about making your current Sage Enterprise Resource Planning system work harder for your company. Indeed, there are almost always improvements that can be made to familiar software. Yet sometimes the needs of a business change in ways that an existing ERP system can simply no longer accommodate without extensive - and expensive - customization and third-party applications bolted on. Eventually, all of those non-native components and their required maintenance take a toll on your system and, consequently, on your organization's bottom line. From production planning, to purchasing, to supply chain strategy, if your ERP system isn’t performing smoothly, then every aspect of your business will feel the pain.

So how exactly can you tell when it's time to make a change? And if that time comes, how might the cloud computing revolution influence your decision-making process? Two upcoming posts on the B/P Impressions blog will be dedicated to providing information on these topics.