Thought so! You are reading this article because:

A) Your company is running an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that is in desperate need of an upgrade;


B) Your company has numerous ERP systems installed across your far-flung enterprise and realizes the business advantage of migrating to a single integrated applications suite;


C) Your company's hodgepodge of PC and minicomputer-based systems has run out of steam and top management has tapped you to begin shopping for an ERP system (gasp!).

You're in luck. This tutorial will provide online tools and resources to help accelerate the ERP information gathering and decision-making process. It's not intended as an end-all, be-all, but more of a high-level overview of the conceptual and technical hurdles you must overcome to pick the most appropriate package, which will likely increase the odds of a successful deployment and meaningful ROI over a reasonable timeframe. (Click here for additional resources.)

One caveat: As you begin your research, you're bound to be subsumed with technology and business imperatives that on the surface appear insurmountable. Don't despair: take them one at a time. Before working yourself into a tizzy -- and suffering severe brain and stomach cramps (save the Tums for your vendor due-diligence) -- you'll need to get a handle on a couple of critical starting points. According to MA's resident ERP expert, Joshua Greenbaum, you must:

• Wrap your mind around the critical business issues your organization seeks to overcome by adopting new enterprise software. Assess your business process strengths and weakness -- then examine those application packages that help to enable more productive and efficient ways of conducting business. Many manufacturing companies still do this backwards. Remember: You can't buy technology for technology's sake -- that's so last millennium!

• Make sure of stakeholder buy-in across the enterprise -- from the plant floor to the top floor and all the key functional departments in between. This not only encompasses documenting functional intra-enterprise as well as extra-enterprise requirements, but getting down to the nitty-gritty and prototyping everything from application architecture (data model and flow) through the look and feel of business-critical screens and forms.