2 Questions To Help You Decide When and How Customization is Right for You by Mark Levinson
Customizing your ERP software can maximize its benefits to you—but, sometimes, at the cost of locking you into software and vendor relationships that don’t meet your long-term needs. On these pages, business journalist, Mark Levenson, takes you through two important issues to investigate in order to make sure you invest in a system that is flexible enough to meet your ongoing business needs.

For an ERP solution to do you the most good, it has to be tailored to the specific needs of your industry—and your company. Consider, for example, whether:

• You have to modify invoices, pick lists and packing slips because your forms don't match the needs of you and your customers
• Your data-entry screens correspond to your shipping methods, product categories, and currency codes
• Your financial reports reflect the categories and measures that may be uniquely important to you
• So, how can you get a solution tailored enough to deliver superb value, yet flexible enough to grow with you over time?

Ask These 2 Questions Now; Save Trouble and Expense Later

• Is it easy to make minor modifications to match the way your employees work?
• Can the solution be integrated easily with your existing software to take advantage of the investments you’ve already made?

These pages will help you to understand—and to answer—these questions so you can choose and adapt the ERP solution that’s right for you. You’ll find articles by independent experts, case studies on companies that have met these challenges successfully, as well as demos and specific examples of how the design of one of Microsoft's own solutions, Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision, achieves the balance between customization and flexibility.

Looking for some basic information about the concept of ERP software? Check out The ABCs of ERP: An Executive Primer by Dr. Katherine Jones of the Aberdeen Group.

Question 1: Is it easy to make minor modifications to match the way your employees work?
Question 2: Can the solution be integrated easily with your existing software to take advantage of the investments you’ve already made?

Mark Levenson is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, Wharton Magazine, Dun’s Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, and other publications.