Editorial

By Richard N. Stover, Publisher

Editorial: Fall 1998
By Richard N. Stover, Editor & Publisher

Enterprise Resource Management (ERM). Why do I think it is important? Because that is where the Global 2000 companies are investing their capital expenditures to become competitive! If anyone doubts that, they should have sat in on a conversation that I had this past weekend. I was attending a reception of people from our community when I had a chance-meeting with a Process Improvement consultant with over 20 years in the business (I'm sure that very few companies were even considering Process Improvement when he started). He was lamenting the fact that his business has declined and completely changed from one of doing many smaller departmental process improvements to only a few large corporate-wide projects. The reason he gave was "SAP."

Like the name "Xerox" which has become synonymous with copies, SAP is the word many people use to speak about ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). While there are many more ERP vendors, SAP has a dominant market share and therefore is the most visible company in the ERP marketplace.

My point in relating the consultant's story is to show that the document management industry is not the only industry starting to see the affects of money being prioritized for ERP to the detriment of implementing other technologies. Just follow the money trail in the Global 2000 companies and you will see whereof I speak.

Does this mean that Y2K is not commanding the current resources? No, Y2K still has priority. But some of the rush to ERP systems is to solve the Y2K problem! And while Y2K will eventually go away, ERP will not.

Strategically, ERP is the technology to watch. If you are a vendor of imaging and EDM, ERP is the technology that needs your consideration. We cover ERP in our Enterprise Resource Management section, primarily covering the issues of integrating ERP with EDM and PDM systems. Users and vendors should find this information timely and strategically important to their respective ways of doing business.

Until next time...