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by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | SAP and Oracle are facing off to win over small- and mid-sized manufacturers. But will either dominate at the low end the way they have in the large enterprise segment? |
| Keywords: | small- and medium-size enterprises, small- and medium-sized enterprises |
True or false? Because most small and medium-sized manufacturing companies have fairly common, simple business processes, they don't need to invest in robust, flexible, and up-to-date enterprise software. Most, in fact, can get by with generic applications or even homegrown, spreadsheet-based systems.
Those may have been true statements at one time, but not anymore. These days, manufacturing companies with less than $1 billion in revenue and fewer than 2,500 employees face many of the same daunting business challenges familiar to larger, global manufacturers. Confronted with the need to cut production costs and access fast-growing developing economies, for example, small and medium-sized manufacturers are being forced to globalize their operations, just like larger companies. At the same time, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must respond to rising customer demands for improved service, supply visibility, and product quality and choice. And, like larger companies, SMEs must generate and track information needed to comply with increasing government regulation.
And SMEs must do all of that with far fewer IT and other resources than larger enterprises.
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