Re: ERP Comments -- JAVA400-L

    Hi Roberto,

    Your question doesn't have a simple answer and there is not likely a
"one size fits all."  The first considerations are the same as for any
purchase versus roll your own:

     Does your staff have the time, budget and expertise, or can you obtain
those skills internally or externally to properly design and construct your
own system?

     Does the commercial version meet your needs and can you reasonably
migrate to it?

    Will you be joined at the hip to the product, and how will that impact
future needs and flexibility?  I know this one well, having been a manager
at JDE and an independent consultant for many clients.

    What are the start up and ongoing costs?  I know that a couple of years
ago, SAP consultants were asking triple our remote rates.  Also, while I
*think* the situation is different now, in the past there have been many
expensive SAP failures.

     What is your user base's attitude towards new products?  If they won't
use it or if it hampers them, productivity will descrease no matter how
"good" the product is in other respects.

     What are the training costs for developers and users in time and money?

 Then,

     How important is portability, both in terms of future migration and
possibilities running satellite subsystems on different platforms?

     How available are capabilities?

These are just a few considerations.

    BTW, and I mean this as constructive user input, I went to your site.
The first thing I noticed is that without javascript enabled, nothing shows.
To me, this is second only to requiring ActiveX controls in terms of turning
visitors away and usability.  Second, while I am pleased that your company
has gone to the effort of various language pages, the English page, at
least, was clearly written by a non-native speaker.  While this shouldn't be
the case for a product like pool equipment ( language doesn't chnage how it
works ), many will turn away if a native presentation is available from the
competition.  The cost of getting a native speaker review is minimal,
especially in comparison to losing potential customers.

 Good luck on your decision and project.  Best,


                                                         Joe Sam

Joe Sam Shirah -        http://www.conceptgo.com
conceptGO         -        Consulting/Development/Outsourcing
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Roberto Carbajal" <rcarbajal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 8:02 AM
Subject: ERP Comments


Hi everybody :


I would like to read your comments about this :

In my company, we are thinking about changing our ERP. This was done in
AS400, RPG and green screen.

There are two options, go to SAP or re-think our AS400 ERP and do it in
J2EE with Websphere and ISeries.

I thank you for your opinions and experiences about this philosophical
and difficult question.

Regards,

Roberto