We would like first emphasize the change in the paradigm. If you look back ? 20 years or even 10 years ? those days you saw ERP/MRP monster applications/systems winning time. Everyone wanted to be looking large and, especially due to traditional business consulting sales efforts ERP applications were sold to large and mid-size clientele. The proposed strategy was: you need three components:

? Reliable Hardware: RS6000, AS/400, Sun Sparc, probably Mac and as the last resort ? IBM PC with MS DOS

? Reliable Database Platform: Oracle, Sybase, Ingress, DB2

? Advanced ERP/MRP: SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle The realities of our post recession economy are:

? We negotiate for every penny and finance the ERP/MRP accounting solution

? We've slashed out our IT group (now IT director is the only employee in IT department)

? We are trying to play with Unix/Linux/Aix ? but those guys are giving us headache in supporting their applications ? they are all nation-wide/international, blah-blah-blah

? We are trying to rescue to budget Microsoft Great Plains ? but we are getting $200 per hour rates from our local providers ? this seems to be higher than it was in Clinton era - $145 per hour What to do and what not to do:

? Offshore Software Development and Support ? it might sound not very patriotic ? but we are in the realm of economic feasibility, so offshore software development is probably the way to reduce cost. Offshoring itself is very new and dangerous trend ? so you have to be extremely persistent in your homework

? Local consulting ? it is not a secret that passing the recession ? we see tremendous consolidation activity on the consulting companies market. This in turn leads to consulting rates increase. In our opinion ? you should rather seek for small and tiny consulting companies to get top quality expertise and reasonable rates Large Corporation Syndrome

? The Professionals Time ? contemporary corporation could recruit high quality employees ? wrong ? if you are following the winning business strategy ? you have to pick management team to be able to motivate the professionals to work for pennies

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns ? we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) ? Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia