InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
April 5, 1999
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More Than An Application
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The functions and processes ERP suites support don't necessarily implement new features in the way IT organizations want or need. This means IT must extend or customize the ERP package.
This kind of application development offers the best way to get the benefits of a standard packaged application while preserving the uniqueness of the company and deriving proprietary strategic advantage from information systems.
Smaller ERP applications may be better at providing the underlying development environment than big ones. For example, Great Plains Software Inc.'s ERP package is built on the Dexterity 4GL, says Nick Manha, VP of the Taylor Group, a system integrator specializing in Great Plains implementations.
"We can get at the source code if we have to," Manha says. Altering source code creates difficulties when upgrading. But the use of the 4GL makes it simple to create and add custom files without changing anything that's already there.
The Taylor Group will also build on Great Plains using Visual Basic for Applications, a trimmed-down version of Microsoft's language tool that can be used to call Visual Basic dynamic link libraries. Using VBA along with Dexterity code, the integrator built a custom car rental and leasing system that ran on top of the core Great Plains financial package.
Similarly, Thomas Cook Global Traveller Services Group in London relied on the underlying Forté environment when it needed to augment its Chordiant call-center app. The use of Forté gives Chordiant a level of flexibility Cook badly needed but couldn't find elsewhere.
"We're still in the process of framing our business services," says CIO Mike Hughes. Other packaged solutions required that the company specify what services it would offer at deployment. With Forté, Cook can introduce new products and services and integrate them into the Chordiant system simply by creating Forté objects. "We've done a lot of Forté programming," Hughes says.
For example, the company's call-center agents at 110,000 service locations worldwide link into the call center to handle the travel, medical, and legal emergencies of its traveling customers. When the company decides to add a service, it builds a new Forté object or, more likely, enhances an existing object.
Miller SQA Inc., a furniture manufacturer in Holland, Mich., uses the Symix ERP package, which is built on the Progress database and provides Progress Software's application development environment. "We do a lot to extend Symix using Progress tools," says Jim Von Ins, director of information systems. The company built a special pricing application and a shop-floor configuration application using the Progress development tools."We didn't know anything about Progress when we bought Symix," Von Ins recalls. As it turned out, the presence of the Progress development environment has emerged as "the key to our success with Symix," he says. The IT group quickly added Progress to its repertoire of skills.
Most recently, Miller SQA extended Symix to the Web by using WebSpeed, a Web extension of the Progress development environment. "We created a custom interface and tied it to Symix security and the data in Progress," Von Ins says. By using WebSpeed, the company can publish Symix information on the Web in HTML format.
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Illustration by Matt Foster
Photo of Von Ins by Dwight Cendrowski
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