22 February, 2023

We often hear feedback about the lack of functionality from their legacy ERPs, Fourth Shift and VISUAL. But there are hundreds of companies worldwide, of all sizes and industries, who use it to run their operations. Though they may have workarounds to fill gaps in functionality, often these gaps are more perception than reality.

If Fourth Shift or VISUAL truly no longer meet the needs of your business, then you should start looking for a replacement. This is especially true given the legacy status Infor has associated with the products.

However, before starting your search, determine critical functionality needed.  ERP applications pretty much have the same complement of core capabilities.

These include:

Complete financials integrated with inventory
Bills of material
Costing
Manufacturing
Procurement
Customer order entry
Shipping fulfillment.
.
So, what separates one ERP from another in terms of functionality?

How the user interface delivers core capabilities
Mobile access to the application
Web browser agnostic
Ease of use
Openness to configuration and personalization
Other capabilities available either as foundation functionality or optional extensions to expand the reach of the product
.
The top five must-have features of an ERP are something your business management team should determine. This will serve as a roadmap to easily eliminate ERP solutions that don’t deliver these features. After you’ve created a short-list of ERP candidates, you can then begin to drill into the details.

Examples of top-five features include things like:

Built-in quality management
Project management
Rules-based product configurator
Support for consignment inventory
Customer or vendor portal capability
.
The team at ICG has decades of experience vetting ERP platforms and implementing them for companies like yours! To learn more about how ICG can help onboard you to a new ERP, contact your sales rep!