Beverage World: How do today’s ERP systems differ from those in the past?
Rory Granros, director of process industry solution marketing, Infor: I don’t know if the definition of an ERP system itself has really changed, but I think a lot of people are looking at it more as an extended business process. All of a sudden it may not just be ERP, but a scheduling solution that you need in order to make sure you don’t have excessive downtime as an example. For a lot of them, the issue may be the ability to change the formulas and the packaging and the labeling effectively and so now a product lifecycle management (PLM) system is also needed. People are looking at things in terms of a complete lifecycle instead of just the execution focus that it always has had in the past.

Also, as the Targets, the Wal-Marts, the Krogers, get bigger and bigger at every level, they’re expecting more service with often times not an increase in price. So there’s this new concept of cost-to-serve.

For most ERPs, they were built in a world that it was your cost of production, and then the rest was not really handled by the ERP. And so this whole cost-to-serve thing has come up where you need to understand the cost of all these different services like promotional pricing, setting up an end-cap display, palletization, shrink wrap.

Ken Weygand, professional services team leader, Apprise Software: I’ve been with Apprise for 11 years and compared to what was available 11 years ago there definitely is a lot more functionality available. Does it do 100 percent of everything they want? It may not do 100 percent of everything they want, but it probably does 98 percent of what they want.

BW: What is the advantage to having the one ERP system instead of separate applications for different functions?
KW: There definitely are pros to having one ERP system that everyone utilizes. Thinking of it from a purely an IT operations perspective I have one system to manage and monitor and administer versus having two or three or five separate systems. As well as the hardware to support those systems, as well as the integration between those systems. A system such as ours, being it is pretty much an all-inclusive ERP system, it’s very tightly integrated, meaning that while I may just take orders from customers and place them into my system, when a customer is calling me and saying, ‘OK, I want 15 cases of this Chardonnay,’ I know right away that there aren’t 15 cases available. And it’s more than just servicing your customers or looking at sales information, it’s also related to interoffice or interbuilding functionality—from the gentlemen out in the warehouse that are moving product from one location on the floor to putting it on a pallet rack to the writing off a bottle or writing off a case because they damaged it. I have visibility to all that information without having to access and run multiple systems or ask someone on my IT staff to get that information.

BW: How safe are the systems today compared to years ago?
KW: With the technologies out there today, it’s not really much of a concern—we deal with several clients that run a 24/5 or 24/7 operation so there is no window of downtime—we need to have this system up 24/7 no ifs, ands or buts. There are technologies out there that you can have up to a second real-time backup protections in place.

BW: How long does it take to get up and running with an ERP system?
KW: It’s going to affect everyone in the business within the organization so it is no easy task, and it’s not something where you drop something in and two weeks later you’re up and running and everything’s fine. Because pretty much everything changes. We’ve done them in as quick as one month, but the average time to put in a new ERP system, getting all your information in there, identifying your processes, your procedures, the reports you need, training everyone, typically on average is about three to six months.

From Beverage World February 15, 2010