navision to be a really needed thing like cellphone

johnson_alonso · 2006-04-17

Dear All,
As far as I've seen, most of questions here are really focused on navision usage but rarely about its sales. I would like to share with you about navision sales in your country, how you increase it, strategy of sales and if it compares to cellphone that is really needed by someone, will it possible to make navision like cellphone ?

rgds,
Johnson

ara3n · 2006-04-17

I also would like to know the developer/consultant ration to customers. There are 53000 installations of Navision. How many developers are there?

johnson_alonso · 2006-04-17

Assumes : average price + implementation price = 45,000.00 USD (rough assumptions)
so, 53,000 installations x 45,000.00 USD = 2,385 millions USD.

I guess the qty of installation is really lower than cellphone sales. although navision differs from cellphone, the primary point is that navision sales will be famous sales where the sales qty is averagely not differ from among the countries that sell navision.

So, I think the ratio is depend on the sales prospects of navision and it's certainly based on the modules sales. 1/3 ratio in a NSC is logically accepted I think.

rgds,
Johnson

Savatage · 2006-04-17

johnson alonso wrote:

Assumes : average price + implementation price = 45,000.00 USD (rough assumptions)

Unless it has gone way done in price I was thinking the avg might be around $100,000 Plus/Minus 20K

johnson_alonso · 2006-04-18

Dear all, savatage,
The price is really expensive, if the quotation will be like that here, the company or clients will think twice except the company is really needed it but if they could handle their ERP system using paperworks, they will disregard the price. Could you explain the modules/granules in the price you've told ?

rgds,
Johnson

"se non e vero, e bene trovato"

kriki · 2006-04-18

The implementation price can vary a lot. A big part of the difference goes to how much costs a developper/analyst a day. This can vary a lot between countries. And I know they cost a lot in the US.

johnson_alonso · 2006-04-18

Dear Kriki, all,
As about navision sales in your country (Italy), is it including in the 53,000 installations ? Do you offer some specific discounts or make something that will be used to maintain long relationship with your client or customer ?

rgds,
Johnson

"se non e vero, e bene trovato"

kriki · 2006-04-18

johnson alonso wrote:

Do you offer some specific discounts or make something that will be used to maintain long relationship with your client or customer ?

I don't know about specific discounts (I am a techie, not a commercial guy).
But we make something to maintain long relationships : good programs and support.

Shenpen · 2006-04-20

Average being $100 000? We are poor guys here in Hungary, but it's rare to be under $150 000 and if we could bill all actual work it would be well over $200 000 on the average.

I can only imagine such a low cost if all configuration, end-user training, development, and especially finding answers for "What the %&@!@& happened again?!" which alone takes 20 days on an average project would be transfered to the internal IT of the client and consultants would do nothing else but train the IT.

Properly analysing all processes and writing a Functional Requirements Specification can't be under 20-25 days. Another 20-25 is a minimum for writing a System Design Document. It's 50 days just to specify what kind of work will be performed. And we can estimate 2-3 development days for each user to make her happy and 5-10 for each manager...

And then comes the training, training people again and again until they finally seem to grasp it, then writing long scripts to transform the cr*p that legacy FoxPro etc. applications boldly call "data", then the long weeks of go-live babysitting...

I think every budget under $300 000 - $500 000 results in a low quality implementation or in forcing consultants to hack for dozens and dozens of days for free.

And that's still cheap - compared to the $300M SAP project of Nestlé

For those companies where it's too much, should choose small accounting/operations packages that print pretty Shipment Notes and VAT Statements and basically nothing else, instead of implementing full ERP.

Shenpen · 2006-04-20

I am not so sure a long relationship is always preferable.

I think for every company their first ERP suite needs to be implemented twice, because the necessary changes in organization, company culture and general way of thinking - hiring internal IT, hiring a few more assistants to make sure data entry is correct, assigning master data to solely responsible key users, deeply understanding how FIFO costing works etc. - only happens well after going live, usually at the time of closing the first financial year when they face all the mess they created during the year. In a long-term relationship, I often find myself reimplementing for free under the guile of "support".

Actually, my best clients are the ones I took over from others - and I have some clients where I performed the original implementation where I would gladly give the support over to others.

There is a joke. A company is hiring a new manager, and he finds three envelopes in his desk, which were left there by the previous manager. They are labeled as "open this at the first crisis", "open this at the second crisis", and "open this at the third crisis". A few months later there is a big problem, he opens the first envelope, and there is piece of paper in it, which says "Blame me." . He does, and survives the crisis. The next time the same thing happens. At the third crisis he opens the third envelope, and the paper inside says "Prepare three envelopes." Yeah, I think it sometimes kinda works this way

johnson_alonso · 2006-04-21

Dear Shenpen,
You are right about the changes before implementing ERP, it will be a culture shock that involved in it., as about the price, it depends on the company and granules. If you offer basic manufacturing for example, it may be cheap and will not exceed 70,000 USD, if total navision standard is bought, I think the company must prepare big budget for that. But your statements are also helpful to me. I sometimes wonder that the companies here are still old-fashioned manufacturing type, this is based on that they still confuse about ERP, they think if it can be done using paper work, hire outsource, using excel spreadsheet and even closed to public, so no place for ERP. sometimes, they never aware for the activity that doesn't consume directly a lot of money, but only times. For example, stock opname and rating of employee, Activity based costing, etc..
these are really hard challenges in selling Navision here. it look like to "move a mountain to the sea". ](*,) ](*,)

rgds,
Johnson

Shenpen · 2006-04-21

Actually I think it breaks down to a bit more abstract, bit more philosophical problem: the concept of internationalization.

ERP belongs to the family of "model-driven" software: they don't produce direct "products" like MS Word or PhotoShop, but rather try to model real-world processes.

However, models are tightly based on the underlying culture. The whole category of ERP systems - not only Navision - is tightly bound to Western European and American culture and way of thinking. Of course, that's all right, because this way of thinking proved to be the most successful in history - but at other places of the world, we, poor consultants don't have the power or influence to change the culture of our countries, so either we give up or will be always trying to do the almost impossible: changing the software to suit the culture, or chaning people to suit the software.

Want some example? In the West, the primary goal of accounting is informing managers and fulfill statutory requirements. In my country the primary goal of accounting is to fulfill the everchanging and crazy demands of tax inspectors. In the West, the managers measure salesperson productivity be looking at key statistical indicators - margin volume sold / month etc. In my country, managers measure this by number of appointments per week. In the West, people generally trust each other and therefore user rights - data reading rights at least - in ERP are tend to be configured loosely. In my country, managers want to hide all sales/profitability figures from employees because they don't want them to know how underpaid they are compared to the profits of the company. In the West, the most important feature of a manufacturing system is costing. In my country the most important part is recording when Joe started working this day and what did he do - completely automatically, or else he will cheat. In the West, the term "logistics" means "providing the right products to the right customers in the right time" etc. In my country, "logistics" means having some uber-strict software for inventory control, in order to prevent theft. In the West, consulting means selling time. In my country, consulting means shipping a software expected to be perfect and bugless for a fixed price, but without knowing the requirements beforehand. And so on, and so on.

I think maybe you are facing the similar problems there.

We need to accept that there is no such thing as a "global village", that cultures are fundamentally different, and a model-driven software developed for one culture won't fit another one just by translating it and adding the bare minimum of statutory requirements, called "localisation".

There are two possible solutions to this problem. Either you become big, really big, I mean ten or fifteen or even more consultants/developers and dozens and dozens of clients, and treat a given ERP software a kind of a development environment, nothing more - in this case, you can afford to re-localize a given ERP basically by rewriting half of it and migrating these changes to every version. And besides becoming big, you specialize in one given industry, so with every crazy, un-ERP-ish demand you meet you can just shrug and say "it doesn't matter, I have enough employees, we can distribute this task without putting to much pain on one consultant - and this will be included in the next release of our add-on, so soon out product will be perfect for the market".

The other solution is to give up, and either change profession or country. I chose to change country, and will relocate to Western Europe in a few months. I simply don't see any other solution.

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navision to be a really needed thing like cellphone

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