Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice
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@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Nonsense. It's entirely possible that NO software exactly meets every requirement. We have to settle on getting as close as possible within budget and time constraints.
Now you just have to get management to understand this and be happy with the solution that you have and the additional add ons or whatever that are required.
Yes that's the ticket right there.
I'm just surprised to not find any solutions that fill this particular market, or niche if you will. Makes me want to start a software company!
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@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Nonsense. It's entirely possible that NO software exactly meets every requirement. We have to settle on getting as close as possible within budget and time constraints.
Now you just have to get management to understand this and be happy with the solution that you have and the additional add ons or whatever that are required.
Yes that's the ticket right there.
I'm just surprised to not find any solutions that fill this particular market, or niche if you will. Makes me want to start a software company!
I get that feeling all of the time. I can't believe how often people tell me that they can't find any software for a given need.
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Or that they can but what they find is terrible.
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@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Or that they can but what they find is terrible.
Regarding shopping carts, this.
Poor handling of variations/SKUs. Can manage payment options right, do refunds or whatever. Completely lack normal business data like what the store paid for an item. How can they even do a profit statement if they don't allow store cost?
Weird limits, like can't export more than 200 of something. Limited products, limited variations, limited orders per month, limited revenue limits.
Poor API abilities or lack of addons or apps.
Bad uptime. Bad support contracts.
Lack of multi-user security features.
Lack of payment options (the one we need)
Lack of good shipping controls.
Lack of good themes and theme-editing abilities.
Lack of mobile responsiveness.
Bad checkout experience.
Bad profit model (they give cart away cheap, then have to pay for all the basic features as addons)List goes on.
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@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Our new BigCommerce Enterprise blows the previous cart out of the water, but does NOT have custom statuses or tags of any kind. It's already taking us from $400/m to $1600/m just for the cart alone.
That hit the boss hard, so now I'm going to ask for another $500 to $6000 a month for some over developed ERP solution that does 20 cool things we'll never use? They won't go for it! That's just life.
This sounds like the sunk cost fallacy. You already spent the money on a product, and now no one wants to look bad that it was the wrong decision.
If I walk in and say, well it's time to get rid of quickbooks, spreadsheets, printed papers, shopping cart, shipping software, cloud accounts, and EVERY method and process you've developed over the last 10 years running this business, and buy this all-in-one thing for $5000 a month to run the whole company. I will immediately be fired.
But it really sounds like the business needs exactly that. They are doing things hodge podge. Of course this is completely normal, it's organic growth. But once you reach a certain level, you need to scrap all that and move to a method more like how the big boys play. Who knows, you might be able to do a staff reduction (aka cost savings) when you move to a more unified ERP solution.
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@Dashrender said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
But it really sounds like the business needs exactly that. They are doing things hodge podge. Of course this is completely normal, it's organic growth. But once you reach a certain level, you need to scrap all that and move to a method more like how the big boys play. Who knows, you might be able to do a staff reduction (aka cost savings) when you move to a more unified ERP solution.
I think part of the question is "is there a big boy solution" in this space? Maybe, I don't really know. But that's the question.
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@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@Dashrender said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
But it really sounds like the business needs exactly that. They are doing things hodge podge. Of course this is completely normal, it's organic growth. But once you reach a certain level, you need to scrap all that and move to a method more like how the big boys play. Who knows, you might be able to do a staff reduction (aka cost savings) when you move to a more unified ERP solution.
I think part of the question is "is there a big boy solution" in this space? Maybe, I don't really know. But that's the question.
It sounds like he's found one or more already. They just have 20 things that he doesn't need.
Also when looking at costs, remember, you're ditching QB (more cost savings or rather cost moving) etc. What other processes can be streamlined, what software gotten rid of because the company moves to a more holistic ERP?
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@guyinpv - Take a look at www.erpnext.com
It has great features that tick a lot of the boxes you are requesting. Best part it's open source - (free if self hosted). They even have a VM preloaded with the software.
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@Dashrender said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
@Dashrender said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
But it really sounds like the business needs exactly that. They are doing things hodge podge. Of course this is completely normal, it's organic growth. But once you reach a certain level, you need to scrap all that and move to a method more like how the big boys play. Who knows, you might be able to do a staff reduction (aka cost savings) when you move to a more unified ERP solution.
I think part of the question is "is there a big boy solution" in this space? Maybe, I don't really know. But that's the question.
It sounds like he's found one or more already. They just have 20 things that he doesn't need.
Also when looking at costs, remember, you're ditching QB (more cost savings or rather cost moving) etc. What other processes can be streamlined, what software gotten rid of because the company moves to a more holistic ERP?
Yes, but, cost.
NetSuite is kind of an "industry standard" but base price for us is $5k.
Is it completely worth it? Well when everything is integrated and mixed with their marketing features and all the employees are trained on it and we understand its features and automations, it probably IS worth it. I wouldn't be able to build a strong enough ROI to try to convince them to spend the extra $4k and change all their methods.I'm not an ERP guy, so really I need a consultant or at least some kind of in-person live demo sales presentation or something. Let them sell the boss on their solution.
From my perspective, I'm looking at people whose mouths drop when I say cloud storage is $5 per user. Or O365 is $10 per user. Or project management is $3 per user. Or antivirus is $2 per user.
Anyway, ERP definitely IS the "type" of solution we need, but so is Big Commerce. ERPs tend to be great in the back office but the front end stuff I've never been impressed with.
In any case, the only "middle" I've found is BrightPearl, which would be around $525 a month. Even that would be a hard sell I'm afraid.
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@guyinpv said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
NetSuite is kind of an "industry standard" but base price for us is $5k.
A month, I assume you mean?
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Then you need to find a software vendor to customize your solution to finish ticking the rest of the boxes
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We have a custom in house ERP it costs us a lot more than $5k/month i'll tell you that.. Probably about $2.8 million a year in our in-house dev team's salary alone.
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@JaredBusch said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Then you need to find a software vendor to customize your solution to finish ticking the rest of the boxes
One called Orderbot does this. With customizing and ramping up the business, it would be $40-$50k first year. Onboarding is typically many thousands. I assume most bigger ERP vendors do this.
I was hoping for more of an off-the-shelf general retailer/ecommerce package that is ready to go at small biz prices.
This company is only about $2kk gross/yr. So a solution costing more than what the entire business does in revenue is probably not financially wise no matter how you cut it.
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Have you looked at something like Odoo?
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@coliver said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Have you looked at something like Odoo?
Haven't come across it yet. Will take a look!
That's why I created thread, see if there are any players I missed.
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@coliver said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
Have you looked at something like Odoo?
Another good one is ERPNext. I used it a lot just for the accounting portion, but it has a lot of features and is customizable.
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@stacksofplates said in Anybody in online retail and warehousing I need ERP advice:
ERPNext
Nice product, I may look into that closer.
https://erpnext.com/ -
I've been looking at ERPNext casually and think that it looks decent. Just looking casually like looking at their web progress. Looks promising.
