Re: Sept 29 LiveWire - Comments ?? -- BPCS-L

Steve,

In a message dated 97-10-01 23:03:55 EDT, you write:

> -  There are over 700 customers implementing BPCS Client/Server at over
>  3,000 sites
>  -  There are 75 Live BPCS Client/Server v.6 customers at over 100 sites
>  -
>  55 out of the 75 live     customers are new business - most came live in
>  less than one year, many in less than six months
>  -  SSA has 8,500 customers at over 25,000 sites with over 3,000,000
>  users
>  using BPCS
>  -  Year-to-date, there have been a total of 200 new account wins"
>  
>  Now granted that the September 22nd quote must have been from sometime
>  before that, their September 29th figure of 75 "live" customers implies
>  that they
>  added 15 very quickly.

Well, you know the three levels of lies.  Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
 Given that (according to APICS figures) the average (from scratch) MRP
implementation is 18-24 months, what portions of BPCS/CS do you figure these
customers are using?  I couldn't imagine converting an existing manufacturing
database to a BPCS-usable form in 6 months either, unless it had very little
data.

>  I find their other numbers less than impressive. 200 new accounts YTD
>  (is that fiscal
>  or calendar ?) subtracted from 8,500 suggests they had 8,300 customers.
>  That means their customer count has increased less than 3%.
>  Out of those 8,300 , only 20 have gone live. ( 75 - 55 )
>  Also out of those 8,300 only (or less than) 520 either have or are
>  implementing v.6 .
>       ((700 implementing - 200 new) + 20 implemented)
>  Looks like so far less than 10% of their customers feel v.6 is the best
>  move for them.

I'd go out on a limb and say that ORD500 is probably the most modified
program in all of BPCS-DOM.  You can't get the source for it, and ODW is
_STILL_ unavailable.  How many existing accounts are going with 6.0 under
those circumstances?  Not many, I would think.

>  I also know that SSA is somewhat liberal in what they consider a "live"
>  site.
>  When we looked at v.6 a year and a half ago, they were counting as
>  "live" some
>  companies that only had a couple of modules installed so far.

BINGO!  How many posts have we had here from people running only INV and
financials?  Gad, if that was all I was running, I'd certainly find a package
other than BPCS to do it.

>  Also mentioned is that they demonstrated ODW. Has anyone actually been
>  allowed
>  to use it outside of SSA ?

To my knowledge, absolutely not.  We got an ODW demonstration two months ago.
 Looked just like IWS.  Mr. Shakir demonstrated ODW at the Fall '95 COMMON
AS/Set User's Group (which looked ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like ODW), yet over two
years later there's nothing to be had.

I think that part of the ODW delay may be based on a "dirty little secret"
that I've heard from reliable sources.  ORD500 for V6 is _NOT_ written in
ODW, nor are the financials.  Due to ODW's general failure as an application
development tool, all of the true "client" programs (ORD500 and the
financials) are written in C++ rather than the new tool.  The "full client"
programs other than ORD500 and the financials are AS/Set programs adapted to
the "ODO" screen scraper.  We COULD be waiting on conversion of the C++
objects to ODW, rather than ODW becoming a viable tool...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-Mail:  DAsmussen@AOL.COM

"A warm smile is the universal language of kindness." -- William Arthur Ward
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