ERP’s Holy Grail: Automatic Upgrades

And the Value of Standard Software

Let us face it, ERP software is complex. It wraps a bundle of essential business workflows under one cover and may even integrate with other internal and external systems. It is the operational life blood of the enterprise. What’s more, the requirements placed on that one system are constantly changing as industry requirements transition and technology advances.

This is especially so in publishing, where only a generation ago, nobody had even heard of Big Data, Direct-to-Consumer, Print on Demand, cloud computing, AI, Amazon, and a host of other “essential” publishing pursuits.

A Sisyphean Task

So, the need to keep your ERP software updated has always been critical and yet has always seemed a Sisyphean task. Why has it been so difficult if it was always so necessary? This article investigates the new realities and how we made it possible.

It is relatively easy to deliver and install automatic upgrades for software like word processing, or email, and even more complex solutions like CRM (Customer Relationship Management). The cell phone update process is the best example of what we should all strive for. Overnight, automatic upgrades. However, installing automatic upgrades for ERP software was something that users could only dream about.

It is astonishing to those of us more grizzled ERP practitioners who had to write their own ERP software back in the days of Ollie Wight (who died in 1983 by the way), that such a thing could be achieved. Yet here it is today.

It was always difficult for most ERP users to keep their systems up to the task of meeting current requirements, for two main reasons:

• They had customized the ERP, and it was expensive to constantly reapply modifications
• The software vendor could not deliver the required new functionality or technology

In both instances, there are multiple causes. Customization is a killer and is easy to fall into. In the case of the software vendor failing to deliver critical new functionality, the vendor may have gone out of business or got swallowed up by a competitor with different priorities. Maybe the vendor was not financially able to make the investment, or when it did, the updates were too generic and did not apply to your company. In both examples, the installed solution quickly becomes obsolete legacy software, and the user company loses most of its investment in people, procedures, and software. At some point they must begin again.

Major Advance from Microsoft

So, what changed? Aside from major advances like the internet and the advent of cloud computing, significant developments were made over the course of just a few years to change this sorry story, and that allowed users to inexpensively stay current with the latest software releases.

Firstly, major suppliers like Microsoft, developed their core ERP software in such a way that additional developments by both users and partners were restricted from the kernel of their software. Microsoft calls these external developments “extensions.” The value of this is that partner organizations such as knk can develop their publishing software in an encapsulated form. In this way, our knkMedia software is created and maintained as an extension to the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and does not modify the core Dynamics code. This structure prevents the domino effect when it comes to applying updates from both Microsoft and knk, with all their new features, and makes the update process secure and extremely cost effective. It protects that original investment in the software.

The Final Step: SaaS (Software as a Service) in the Cloud

When that progress was made, ERP updates were getting closer to, but not quite as simple as a cell phone app update, where the upgrade happens automatically overnight. That final advance was made possible when application software vendors like knk made their software available in the cloud, in a SaaS (Software as a Service) mode.

Under these circumstances, if the user implements the standard knkMedia software on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, then all Microsoft operating system upgrades, plus all updates to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central ERP applications (on which knkMedia is built), and all knkMedia upgrades (twice a year) are automatically applied on the user’s instance, literally overnight. All that is required is a subscription to the software and support from knk. The Holy Grail has been found and captured!

In summary, these capabilities are built on these basic tenets:

• Invest with a software supplier that is focused on your industry – publishing
• Invest with a platform of scale, such as Microsoft (Power Platform, lower costs)
• Implement the standard application software that your vendor provides
• Implement the solution in the cloud, with superior security and connectivity
• Safety in numbers (over 130,000 MS Dynamics user companies worldwide)

What publishing customers want is the ability to apply technology innovations quickly to achieve continuous competitive advantage. The return to the “standard” provides this rapid innovation cycle via the ability to inexpensively deploy new upgrades and technology, which is unquestionably a critical success factor for publishers. And with the power and scale of Microsoft to invest in generic ERP updates, it leaves knk free to focus their development dollars solely on upgrades for the publishing industry, providing a double functional advantage and a lower total cost of ownership for users.