K3 puts manufacturing SMEs more in touch with their information, Microsoft style

Micross for Windows – all 40 modules of it with “some of the gaps now filled in” – is being re-branded by developer K3 (which acquired the Kewill ERP applications business two years ago) as SmartVision as the company reaffirms its Microsoft credentials and proves its ERP investment story. Managing director Russell Dorset says that whereas Kewill “hadn’t particularly looked after the product set”, K3 is not only responding to requirements from its user base, but also investing in the systems. And hence SmartVision, which he says has not so much been redeveloped as had its weaknesses addressed and a completely new front end added. What users will immediately notice is its ‘look and feel’, which now emulates Microsoft Outlook and Excel throughout the application modules – so closely in fact, that managers will find it virtually impossible not to find their way to any information they require. They’ll also find SME-level advanced planning and scheduling and some product data management (PDM). Dorset says it’s all aimed at making ERP information more immediately accessible and useful to a much wider range of users with minimal, probably no, training, thus spreading real time data – and of course its license sales. He says that while operational user costs will remain at £2,000, management seats will be down at £500. But that’s not all; this looks so simple and intuitive for Excel and Outlook users, there’s every chance you won’t be needing your It department or Crystal reports to get ad hoc analysis, reports and graphs out of the system. And with business alerts, workflow and the like behind it all, it does look very compelling. With a basis in Microsoft’s .Net technology, proactive management based on push-driven information becomes a reality. Incidentally, if you’re not an Outlook user, there’s also the choice of running this straight off a browser in thin client mode using precisely the same software components and picking up exactly the same ERP data. First user is £15 million Trend Marine which has bought £100,000 worth of SmartVision specifically because of the management environment. The firm makes wiper blades and motors for the luxury yacht market and is going for an end-to-end 32 user system. Dorset also says its part of getting even closer to the most pervasive technology provider, Microsoft. “As a partner, K3 now gets early access to Microsoft technology,” he says, and adds that the firm’s expansion of the Outlook and Excel environments is likely to find its way right back into Microsoft’s own offerings – including presumably Microsoft Business Solutions’ (MBS) former Navision and Great Plains ERP systems. All of which rather begs the obvious question: how can Microsoft-centric ERP vendors serving the SME manufacturing community with inevitably limited R&D resources keep ahead of the giant. How in fact can they prevent themselves from ultimately becoming MBS VARs? “They would like us to become a VAR of Microsoft,” admits Dorset. “But there’s no chance… We don’t want to be a VAR of their ERP… There’s no value in being a VAR.” Although that rather depends on quite what services are required from VAR and author, he is adamant that K3 and the multitude of others on Microsoft platforms, will remain as separate entities with separate and full ERP. Dorset accepts that his analysis may not stand the test of time, but he insists that Microsoft will have its hands full for the next few years sorting out not only its range of ERP offerings, but its inherited VAR community, particularly where manufacturing is concerned. And he points to the delayed arrival of Microsoft’s CRM application set as proof of a company that’s got its hands rather more full than it might want. He may yet have cause to eat his words. MBS approach to manufacturing may currently be embryonic as the firm gets to grips with its new acquisitions and assembles the wherewithal to move forward its ERP at the SME level, but get there it will. And rather sooner than later. Either way, for now K3’s SmartVision will be launched in January and ready for migration. It’s not a free upgrade and there will be cost implications for the additional users to which Dorset refers. However, he says there will be new licensing models for those wanting to take advantage, and that the benefits will provide very rapid return on investment as companies transform themselves with ready access to real time information already in their systems. A good point.