Rev-A-Shelf LLC, a Louisville, Ky.-based storage-product manufacturer, uses the combination of Crystal Reports and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite to handle all of its business performance management needs. The company is small, so those needs are not as extensive as they might be for a Fortune 500 business. Still, IS manager Michael Rodgers and database administrator Rick Moreschi have learned a lesson every organization can profit from: There are real benefits of keeping your BPM software setup simple.

BPM: When did you buy your ERP suite, and how did you go about choosing it?

Michael Rodgers: We bought the Epicor suite back in 2000. We had the earlier versions of Epicor; we're grandfathering. We had it back in the old days when it was FocusSoft. We have migrated with it all the way through. When it became an Epicor product -- I think in 2000 -- it was Epicor 6.4. We've been with it from there to 7.0, to 7.2, to 7.35, which we're in now. We use the Epicor Financials and Distribution suites for the front end, for our office stuff -- for accounts payable, accounts receivable, asset management, cash management, general ledger. We use the Epicor eWarehouse side to handle all of our inventory and production transactions.

BPM: Have you required much customization to these systems to be able to adequately monitor and manage Rev-A-Shelf's performance without a separate BPM software package?

Rodgers: Before we did our first upgrade to add the eWarehouse solution, we ran Epicor in its pure version. When we upgraded, we stayed in Epicor, in its pure version. No modifications at all. We have added one or two modifications to the eWarehouse feature, but that was it.

We do a lot of sales reports and other custom reports, particularly related to inventory. Before we developed our current process of doing this, we were always, always running short on product. We were always having problems getting product in the door. We didn't truly know what our minimums were. We were looking at average usage over a three-month period of time.

Now we have created reports that are automatically sent out to our vendors that tell our vendors when we are short of parts, "Hey, you need to get these parts in here; we need these parts." We also use the same reporting system to tell the warehouse folks and the inventory folks, "Hey, this is needed." Purchasing doesn't have to send them a notice in some cases. The notice is automatically generated in the system and sent to them. Purchasing just needs to follow up and make sure that the release is done at that particular time. Rick Moreschi, the database guy here, creates the reports that go out to alert all of these people we're short, when this is going to be ordered, and how soon we can get it in.

BPM: How have your needs for custom inventory reports changed your ability to upgrade the ERP suite?

Rodgers: When we went to do the upgrade to add the eWarehouse piece, Rick was working for the consulting company that brought that system in. And I can tell you, honestly, the consulting costs were more than the software and the hardware costs.

Rick Moreschi: That's not to say consulting costs are all bad. Unless you are really proficient with the software and can dig into it, you've got to have somebody there to say, "Hey, this is how you can use it. Here's what it can do and can't do."

If you brought in a piece of software to start from scratch and said, "Hey, day one, this is new software we're going to use," any of them will implement instantly. The big expense -- this is where a vertical product probably has an advantage over a general off-the-shelf product -- is when everybody says, "Well, I've got to have this function, and it has to function in this manner, period." So now you're talking modifications. And that's where it hits most companies in the pocket. Most customers of software are hit in the pocket because they're either inflexible or not capable of changing their process to fit the process designed into the software. They actually have to go out and modify the software to meet their needs, whether it be a true need or just, "Hey, my mom uses Tide, my grandma used Tide, I'm going to use Tide."

BPM: It sounds like you still don't have a lot of customization in your system. Do you see benefits from that?

Moreschi: Yeah. We upgraded back in February, and basically I did it all. I didn't have to call in any support. That's the first time that I've ever done an upgrade by myself. We were on Epicor 7.2 at that time. I had to do two upgrades to get to 7.3 and then 7.35. I simply ran the upgrade to 7.3, then I put in the disk and ran the upgrade to 7.35, because we kept the Epicor core.

Rodgers: And while he was doing that, I was going around loading all the different PCs to upgrade the software on them. We did that over a weekend.

Moreschi: It could have been done in a day if we had a smaller database. It was transparent to most users. And that's what you want, whether you buy a vertical solution or shelf software. You want to keep it as core as possible. If you need a mod, you want to just have it touching the system, viewing the current system but staying outside of it, so that you can upgrade the core software and then upgrade your mod on the side.

BPM: Have you ever experienced problems with a BPM system that is highly customized?