During the selection process for a print MIS/ERP system, the various costs and possible benefits are analyzed in considerable detail and then assessed for each software vendor. Oddly enough, one important factor is often completely missed during this process. Which one?

The cost of the next system!

The selection of a new application is never done as a back-of-an-envelope exercise. After all, most organizations want to benefit from the new solution for many years. Many prospective buyers tell us something like the following:

“From a bookkeeping standpoint, the investment’s term of depreciation is 5 years. But ideally, we want to work with the new solution for 10 years or more.”

Anyone who wants to work with a system for that long must have a good crystal ball. Because in 10 years’ time, a lot can change! What will the world look like in the year 2032? Which devices will we be working with then? How far will the technology have developed? And which parts of our future have yet to even be invented, developed and marketed?

So there are plenty of questions, and from today’s rapidly changing vantage point we can only guess the answers.

To get a handle on this challenge, it might be instructive to turn the clock back a decade or two.

Can you remember the exact state of technology in 2002, or 2012? Things that are now commonplace, like tablets, the verb ‘swiping’ and of course the omnipresent smartphone were just beginning to appear. Google was just starting to become a verb.

And cloud technology was still in its infancy.

Considering how ubiquitous, and practically indispensable these technologies are now to so many people, perhaps we can get some perspective into what might be expected from new developments in the next decade.

And taking it back home, can you comprehend what all this means for your potential MIS/ERP vendors? Consider the required competencies, for example, or the required R&D budgets, the availability of international sales channels or the necessary entrepreneurship and decisiveness, of course.

If you think about the future of ERP technology, you conclude that you are selecting more of an ERP concept these days than an ERP solution – a concept that is developing at a furious pace.

And which must develop!

Because vendors that fall behind or miss the boat at any time are quickly lost in this market. And the most painful bit: their clients are lost, too.

Companies that are considering new solutions would do well to test their vendors’ degree of future proofing rigorously. Do the vendors on your shortlist have any chance at all surviving this rat race until 2032? Are they (sufficiently) profitable these days, for example? Do they have sufficient international scale? What is the size of their R&D budget? How innovative are they? And is a formal product roadmap available for the solution on offer?

By getting a good understanding of the prospective vendors’ commercial legitimacy during the selection process, you can prevent many unpleasant surprises in the future.

However, if you fail to look to the future, then just make sure you include a huge portion of your budget for your next ERP system!

PrintVis is a print-specific MIS based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. For 25 years we’ve been adding and continuously improving the functionality that print companies need to manage all aspects of their daily production. And because PrintVis is a seamlessly combined solution on a proven, powerful ERP platform from Microsoft, you can trust that the system will still be reliably serving your business many years from now.

A standard solution for minimized implementation time

PrintVis is a standard system with a deep vertical focus on the print industry and always focusing on repeatable implementations. We are continuously working on minimizing implementation time, so our customers will have a smoother and faster go-live.

If you would like to try it out yourself, you can start a free trial or if you prefer to see a demo you can book a demo here.

Let us know if you have questions about implementation or would like to connect with a PrintVis Partner – contact us now.

Join us next Thursday for a free, live overview demo of PrintVis!