Open Source ERP Guru

SAP ERP is by far the leading solution on the market. It’s not open source, of course, but I’ve found a very nice open source solution to a common problem in any ERP system: change notification. Data – both master data as well as transactional data – changes frequently in ERP systems by different users in the organizations. Keeping track of these changes is no simple task – it can get rather tedious to have to go through long reports , which are sometimes out-dated. And being aware of these changes is key to making smart business decisions.

NotisApp, a free, open source change notification platform (currently for SAP ERP only) aims to close the gap between master data changes and the business user. The platform connects, on one hand, to a SAP ERP server and pulls change information. It then publishes the changes to a web-based Change Portal. Once changes are published, users can subscribe to change categories (for example, by plant) and get email notification with change information. User can also search the change portal , find relevant changes by automatically-generated tags, register to RSS feed of change categories, and much more.

One of the nicest features of the NotisApp platform is that it requires minimal change to the backend SAP ERP server – only a few lines of code (in the form of a function module) are added, and that’s it! No complex development or customization is required.

Below are some screenshots of the platform. If you are using SAP ERP, I suggest you give it a shot.

Change subscription page

Change document published to change portal

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) software is a set of technologies and best practices providing insight into business activities.

The need for business intelligence is an integral part of any operational information system (e.g. ERP). Initially, reports were used to retrieve such information, but as users became more demanding and sophisticated , and the amount of enterprise data requiring analysis grew exponentially, software companies started developing stand-alone BI tools, separate from their transactional systems-ERP.

These BI tools initially included a database designed specifically to allow multi-dimensional analysis of large amounts of data (data warehouse) and tools to query and mine that warehouse. An example for such a query might be comparing year-over-year sales in a region of a specific line of products.

BI tools evolved further,improving data extraction processes from the source ERP systems,enhancing performance and user experience through graphical and web-based querying tools.

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The global IT industry is on a constant consolidation trend. This trend is powered by two vectors – small software companies find it next to impossible to compete against the industry leaders ,while IT MegaVendors, are always looking to broaden their product and service portfolio, usually through acquisitions.

The business software world is especially centric and the competition is fierce. Companies that have been selling technology and middleware to support the deployment of business applications are looking for new revenue streams. These companies can either develop business applications from scratch (highly unlikeable) or acquire existing business software vendors. Open source ERP solutions are perfect acquisition candidate for this strategy.

These post will discuss the possibility of an Open source ERP acquisition by large IT vendors, focusing on potentials buyers.

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Any news you hear about an open source projects acquisition by one of the large IT vendors brings mixed feelings. The first things you think about is the practical meanings of such a move. MySQL is such an important component of the Internet (it is storing the very words you are now reading..), that the slightest changes in the way MySQL is distributed (currently it’s a completely free,open source project) might cause a real disruption to the growth of information on the Internet.

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