ERP vendor perspective Rhetorics and promises

Leaders in every industry win with SAP. (SAP) mySAP ERP, Your Business, Your Future, Your Success. (SAP) …What makes the difference is when you can use the financials system as an instrument to control and analyze your operations – that’s when you start to make money on it. (IFS) Imagine your enterprise…Think of the possibilities… (IFS) Turn strategy into reality with the IFS solution for corporate performance management. (IFS) The IFS solution… makes it simple to stay on top of your business, turn your strategies into action, and build continuous improvement into work processes. (IFS) Flexible system for all your strategies. (IFS) …financial professionals, executives, and managers. They no longer have to handle routine administrative tasks, allowing them to concentrate on value-added activities… (SAP)

Oracle can also… frees up resources to grow your business. (Oracle) Oracle… makes buyers more productive and frees procurement professionals to focus on the most-strategic activities. (Oracle) …by releasing staff from routine tasks such as creating manual orders and answering supplier and requester inquiries – so they can then concentrate on high-value activities such as spend analysis, sourcing, and contract negotiation. (Oracle) As a result, costs are reduced, processes are streamlined, and everything flows more smoothly throughout your value chain. (SAP) Oracle Projects and Oracle Financials provides a complete view of budgets and costs, ensuring that savings will hit the bottom line. (Oracle) With IFS Financials you can lower costs dramatically… (IFS) Decrease operating costs…Free resources and reduce order cycle time… reduce excess inventories, and adapt…Realize greater revenue opportunities and improve…Reduce planning cycles and lead times, enabling faster response to opportunities and continuous process improvements…Make solid, facts-based decisions…Optimally maintain… (SAP)

Gain new market insights and adapt quickly to market changes Gain new market insights and adapt quickly to market changes. Sense and respond to customer requirements in real time. (SAP) Reach your full potential. mySAP ERP Operations can help your entire organization reach its full potential for profitable growth by helping everyone in your value chain to operate more intelligently and efficiently. (SAP) …ERP software that gives companies the flexibility to adapt business processes to new market conditions while simultaneously maximizing productivity: mySAP ERP. (SAP) Implement mySAP ERP with minimal disruption to ongoing business processes. (SAP) In today’s demanding business climate, you are under pressure to meet strategic goals, drive profitability, and ensure regulatory compliance. At the same time you need the flexibility to…mySAP ERP meets all of these challenges… (SAP)

Top Management perspective E Company Metal and Electronic Industry Company Turnover 75 MEUR Personnel 250. Operations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherland and England.

"When a customer's size increases, its purchasing power will increase too. When prices in the EU have become more transparent, it follows that the price level falls too. That is the reason we have to improve our operational efficiency and competitiveness so that financial performance remains good despite the drop in the price level."  E Company “Our goal is to be one of the major suppliers in our sector, reach 200 million turnover and increase the skills and knowledge of our personnel. Maintain the competitiveness requires an efficient organization, between the departments and functions.“ Company E

"In global operations our functions and activities has to be better coordinated. It is also an important strategic objective. In our production site in Finland the strategy will be realized in huge growth in production volumes. Most important issues are internal processes and logistics. Our logistics network includes both clients, all our divisions and functions as well as our suppliers ". E Company In practice, IT department is required to adapt to the business operating in networks. That means also new information management strategy, so that IT solutions will increase the transparency of all functions. This means that transactions in production or marketing will be immediately available in financial management of purchasing and logistics. The new system should collect such information, which has not been previously collected. CFO, Company E

Our company is changing from traditional "production unit – storage unit - sales unit“ business model to the more integrated supply chain, in which the company would operate only logistical operator, and outsource as much as possible to the non-core and manufacturing tasks to the subcontractors. The strategy is based on idea that each makes tasks they can do most efficiently. CFO, Company E

The main objectives are cost reduction and efficiency improvement The main objectives are cost reduction and efficiency improvement. It is essential that the performance are high level and we are able to respond more quickly to our customer orders and advance the delivery time. CFO, E Company Cost reduction objectives can be achieved at the operational level by lowering the inventory value and shortening the supply chain, as well as by reductions of maintenance costs of our current IT systems. Logistics Manager, E Company Our main objective has been to development our processes. Through the process improvement we aim to achieve cost-effectiveness in operations. New ERP would form a wholeness, with a direct impact throughout the Group. Business Controller, E Company

ERP system selection was largely based on images ERP system selection was largely based on images. ERP vendors create impressions of how the systems solve the customer's problems. In Company E, particular attention was paid to cases in which the old system was not working. In these critical factors, Software A presented its superiority over the others. Software A was practically "closest" to the solution of what Company E was looking for. In this way image of the systems functions raise another system ahead of the second and the third one. The other two system (B an C) were “too light” for ERP system. CFO, E Company