Re: Is ERP dead?

franz400@triad.rr.com writes:

>  the sad part is that many winners of this bidding 
>  may not be established in the line of business, 
>  and may not fully understand the business. 
>  The e-bid companies managing the bidding certainly don't. 
>  One size fits all !! How do you define "Customer Service" in a bid?
>  
>  Jim Franz

My employer lost out in a bidding today to some outfit whose bid was below 
the cost of the materials to make the product ... our bid includes cost of 
materials, cost of assembly, budget for quality assurance ... our management 
believes that some companies do not have a good enough ERP & internal 
controls to know what their costs really are.  Obviously the customer of the 
bidding war is the loser in this, since they will get either shoddy results 
or a lost vendor & have to do it all over again.

We are in a business in which the final product is mission critical for human 
lives.
Think planes falling from the sky because of shoddy ingredients, or medical 
technology failing when there is no quick & easy backup for the human lives 
it is protecting.  Traditional business has guaranteed quality ... anything 
that does not measure up - we stand behind it & fix it at our cost, but this 
also goes back to our vendors ... a customer returns a part that was 
defective - we analyse & determine the problem was in component from one of 
our vendors - which have to foot the bill for repair costs by us & by our 
customer.

Where do you define that in the bidding process?

Do we now start manufacturing sub-standard products so we can compete in the 
e-bid process?

No, our sales department needs to communicate to our customers who are at 
risk of using e-bidding, what the negatives are.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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