Lights, camera, ERP

Lights-camera-ERP

SYSPRO was featured on CNBC Africa last week when Chris Bishop interviewed me on the Entrepreneurial Edge Show. Besides the obligatory pre-interview application of make-up, I thought things went pretty well. I feel in a very fortunate position to love what I do and work with a team dedicated to delighting our clients and improving our products and services every day.

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The Missing Link

The missing link

I have always loved food with the passion it deserves. Of course this has at times resulted in an increased waistline. A little over a year ago I decided to do something about it and take back some control. I soon discovered that all the energy I once dedicated to over-eating was now directed at over-analyzing everything I consumed – in detail. One thing became clear; I had always been ignorant of what I was eating, and in such vast unhealthy quantities.

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Creating Effective ERP Project Teams

erp-implementation-project-team

Selecting a project team for your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is all too often done on the basis of job role, rather than who is best for the project. What actually makes a good ERP team player? In my opinion there are four requirements: competency, skill, knowledge, and position – in that order.

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Executive buy-in is critical – Part Two

Executive buy in is critical

My previous blog was about the importance of leadership and executive buy-in during Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations. Without top-down leadership, no one else in the organisation will buy-in either, and the company will not get much value from the software.

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Selecting an ERP Solution

ERP selection

Whether you call them RFIs, RFPs, RFQs* or some other acronym, and whether you are a vendor or a customer, those three letters conjure up the same impression in many minds – pages and pages of detailed questions about a software product’s functionality, which takes weeks to create, days to respond, and weeks again to review.

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Top tips to stop your ERP system falling into disrepair…

I may be turning into a grumpy old man. Last week my family gave me this dubious honour after a week, where I apparently complained about unruly children in my favourite restaurant (why are children allowed to run riot in public). This included the use of mobile phones in the same restaurant (clearly I was not in a good mood) and the use of “reply all” to emails at work (do I really need 10 copies of the same email).

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Change for the sake of change

Change for the sake of change

After a decade of driving the same brand of car, I decided to make a change at the beginning of this year and bought something different. Functionally, the new car is great. It has cut my fuel bill in half, provides more interior space than my old car did, is a doddle to park, and has enough electronic features to keep me amused for hours. As a gadget-loving geek, working in the hi-tech software industry, I pride myself on being an early adopter who just “gets” new technology as it arrives. But this car may be just too much of a good thing. Even after two months of driving it on a daily basis, I find it difficult to use. There are just too many buttons and scrolling bars; too many ways to perform the same task, and too many features hidden behind elaborate menu steps…

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The Ownership Conundrum

The ownership conundrum

Ownership of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is much more than the signing of a contract at the time of purchase. In order to deliver value it must be the consequence of a long term strategy of ownership, and that means a long term commitment to data integrity, solution design and education.

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Revolutionizing business in Africa with ERP solutions

It’s fascinating to be living in a time where the world is not ruled by tyranny or dictatorship, socialism or capitalism, but instead by technology. The Arab Spring which began more than a year ago is a classic example of how technology (such as social media) is proving more powerful than any one government’s laws, or one society’s philosophies. The power being created here is happening through giving the man in the street access to a sophisticated mass communication mouthpiece, something that historically was the exclusive domain of the elite and powerful.

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