The ERP Book

I was just about ready to go when my customer turned to me and asked a question that in my 9 years of consulting I had never heard. She said, “Where can I get a book on using our ERP?” I looked at the shelf above her head and I could see the user manuals sitting right there. I pointed and said, “There they are.”

“No, I mean a book that talks about best practices – something that tells me how to use it correctly, not just how the screens work.”

For a brief moment I was speechless. An image of searching Amazon.com for their ERP came into my head, and I immediately knew the answer.

“There is no such book. That’s why customers need companies like ours to help them.” I pointed to a copy of “The Goal” that was sitting on her desk. “Books like that are really your best resources to implement an ERP.”

This really bothered me. I don’t know exactly why but her words kept turning over and over in my head. While I drove away I began to think of what such a book might need to contain. The information a business would need to implement ERP. I set the idea aside...


... Now I'm here, in the blogosphere and although I've taken a shot at writing this "book" a few times in the past, I don't generally manage to get very far. I've been blogging at my web sites www.sabreit.ca and www.creativemfg.ca for a couple of years and I enjoy doing that. I finally came to the conclusion that this way of recording my thoughts (rather than trying to write a manuscript all at once) might be more successful.


This is the first of many Blog entries intended for SME businesses who intend to implement an ERP. What is an SME? It's a small and medium enterprise - certainly fewer than 500 employees, and often fewer than 100. What's an ERP? It's short for Enterprise Resource Planning, the "mother" of accounting, supply chain and manufacturing software systems.


The vast majority of books on ERP are intended for the very large business. This blog is the beginning of my attempt to create something that's more or less a collection of the information a small customer should understand. Particularly if you are a manufacturing company or industrial supplier looking for input on implementing ERP - this will hopefully be useful to you.