No More Nightmares: Upgradeable Development as You Go with SyteLine
Sophisticated technology at your fingertips – that’s the perception that smartphones have created. Easy software updates are no longer a luxury – they are the expectation.
You should expect convenience with your ERP upgrade, too.
SolutionsX can show you how – minus the headaches of your experience with previous upgrades.
“Out of the box, no ERP will serve all your needs. That’s why most ERPs are implemented with customizations and modifications to suit specific business needs,” says Scott Brickler, managing partner of software and development at SolutionsX. “But businesses that have made those changes to their ERP are often afraid to upgrade. They have horror stories from previous upgrades. Often they’ll wait wait two years or even five years to do it.”
Maybe you’ve endured nightmarish and expensive upgrades to your ERP in the past, and because of that you’ve minimized modifications to your system.
It’s time to wake up from the nightmare. You’re not trapped in your old ERP.
“ERP has been around since the ’70s. It used to be if you changed it, you couldn’t upgrade, there was a huge cost, there was uncertainty about whether your modifications would work,” Brickler says. “ERPs, specifically SyteLine is designed and build to be modified and maintain its ease of upgrade. The economics have changed. If a mod (modification) to your ERP can save you an hour a day or even an hour a week, it’s work making. You’ll be able to upgrade downstream without causing a burden on time or resources. Future upgrades are no longer an obstacle to ensuring your ERP serves your business needs.”
SolutionsX uses the Infor Mongoose framework to develop those custom solutions (mods) with SyteLine ERP based on your unique business needs. Mongoose follows an addition approach, rather than a change style to developing custom applications.
That means when you go to upgrade, you’re not canceling out those modifications you made – the modifications carry forward. Instead of a days-long process customizing the upgrade software again, the upgrade includes adjusting the mods to be compatible with the new version. You can upgrade even an extensively customized SyteLine system without sacrificing your core technology.
“Mongoose makes things easy and offers tons of capabilities,” Brickler says. “If you do the mods correctly and follow a good guideline, then you reduce the number of changes and do the work as additions instead. When you follow that principle, it will upgrade seamlessly, and testing is minimal.”
SolutionsX recommends customers upgrade their ERP on a yearly basis to keep pace with advances in technology and ensure optimum performance. Cloud-based systems will automatically update multiple times a year.
In general, SolutionsX recommends that you wait about three to six months after a new version has been released to do this upgrade install. And always apply critical fixes immediately.
“Don’t wait too long to where performing the upgrade becomes laborious. The process has improved tremendously with the most recent versions because of the Mongoose framework,” Brickler says.
Contact us at info@solutionsx.com or 866-765-8964 to learn more about the process and tools SolutionsX utilizes to make the ERP implementation and upgrades easier than ever before.
