Most business systems (ERP) in use today, or available from leading software authors, still have a dependency upon third party modules or packages to supplement their functionality.
This is not in obscure areas like CAD systems for kitchen or bathroom design, but in day to day, core business activities.
Some systems for trading don’t have an inbuilt CRM system to improve customer services, or may depend upon another author’s business intelligence or field sales system. Unbelievably, some don’t even have their own ability for mass emailing of invoices and statements – and therefore need to link to third-party products to achieve this.
Other areas such as mobile warehousing (picking with handheld devices), advanced stock replenishment, rebate calculation, container management and logistics may all be catered for by a “bolt on” product, a spreadsheet, or worst of all, manually – as opposed to having all “within the box”.
Having a single system to do all – a “single version of the truth” – makes absolute sense for virtually all businesses as well as independent merchants and their suppliers for the following reasons:
