Type “mid-market ERP” into google and you will get over 6 million pages describing platforms and their benefits. While ERPs are not new, mid-market ERPs are a relatively new option for high growth small businesses and mid-market ecommerce businesses. These options are now changing the landscape for business owners and executives looking at improving their inventory management practices, and an option that Clearinity is now recommending.
Clearinity has maintained the stance that ERPs for many businesses are unnecessary, costly, and becoming quickly outdated. While we still stand behind that in regards to traditional ERP models, client requirements and software development costs are changing the lay of the land. These systems are cloud based, more affordable than traditional ERP system implementations, and offer a holistic approach to development paradigms.
Here at Clearinity, we live our values. So in honor of transparency and ethical leadership, we want to dedicate a quick article to why we are getting behind Mid Market ERPs now and what we hope to see in the future.
Mid Market ERP Benefits Compared to Traditional ERPs
Last fall, we had the opportunity to explore Netsuite. As we were considering this platform as a potential solution for clients facing a migration after LOCATE’s unexpected acquisition, we were quickly disappointed. While the platform is robust, it became clear that Netsuite is a traditional ERP model. They work both cloud and server based, they do not have frequent development updates, and they are costly for any kind of flexibility needed. For our clients in the $20 million to $70 million range, Netsuite would be like throwing them in the ocean with no life rafts. Our service model just doesn’t align with Netsuite’s support or scaling.
As we began digging deeper into alternative solutions we realized that mid-market inventory management systems were quickly becoming obsolete and being replaced with mid-market ERP options. This was a new discovery and one we were hesitant to open ourselves up to. Platforms like Odoo and Brightpearl who also claim mid-market status, never truly answered the ecommerce wicked problem sets we deal with daily.
While we see promise in softwares like Xorosoft, we are remaining technologically agnostic as we have always been. The fact is, not one solution will work for every business and that allows multiple platforms to exist in this space.
What We Hope To See In The Future
The best of breed models will still be popular and something we stand behind. In the future we hope to see more inventory management systems fill the gap that LOCATE will leave.
Best of breed models can become cumbersome for mid-market organizations. While beneficial for keeping costs low in the beginning, stretching these systems can often mean expending more money on development later on. Additionally, best of breed model options currently are missing the mark on development paradigms and have become seemingly fragmented in their approach to updates leading to clunky user experience.
In the future, we hope to continue supporting both IMS and mid-market ERP models. As we continue to grow and match our clients needs, in addition to the ever changing industry market, we are looking for platforms that offer ecommerce capabilities, listen to their implementation partners for development suggestions, and seek to establish relationships not just transactions.
Mid Market ERPs could be the future of inventory management
As the mid-market ERP platforms continue to evolve and expand, they could be the answer to inventory management. While we patiently will continue to do our due diligence on researching these systems, we also encourage our clients to present us with options that they believe might be a great fit. We will be able to help our clients assess why a technology is not a fit or not. Additionally we can help identify if that platform should be labeled as “mid-market” ERP, so often we see marketing language convolut the actual product capabilities.
We are excited to continue to see how the mid-market ERP space continues to grow and evolve. If you are interested in learning more please feel free to reach out to us at info@clearinity.com.