Effective business.
We know how to do it.

Ultima develops, supplies and implements
ERP-systems of international standard
for the medium and big businesses.
And to the small businesses as well — if they

don’t mean to remain so for long.

CALLCENTER AS
A SOURCE OF JOY

1. 
   

   The cost of implementing SAP or MS is several times higher than its real value

   It’s millions of dollars, it’s just that you weren’t told everything.Apart from the actual implementation, in case of Microsoft, you will be imposed to pay licenses for all parallel software. For your comparison — the cost of our implementation.

   Or maybe you were offered the attractive «special version for small business» for some «funny money» of € 100 000? The money is better spent on a typewriter — the functionality will not yield much, and the cost and terms of «implementation» will be drastically better.
   «Special Versions» are marketing mixes: first you pay little, and afterwards, when you bump into limited functionality (which is inevitable, because that’s what the «special editions» are designed for), you are offered to buy the next «unit» for a hatful of money.
   And add a separate budget for the «implementation». In general, the miser pays twice.

2. 
   

   Functionality: we have it more powerful

   Especially in such critical units as logistics and finance.
   We avoid all bubble schemes with separate purchases of additional «units»: paying for a license guarantees you the full range of functional solutions without any restrictions. Including the future solutions- the system is constantly evolving, updates are supplied free of charge.

3. 
   

   The implementation timeframe: we work 2-3 times faster

   Does your company have three or four extra years to halt, while yesterday’s students in white shirts from official partners of SAP or Microsoft feed your business into the hoary perceptions the vendors’ headquarters have of the «best practices»?
   Halt is a step back, don’t turn off the business.
   The full implementation of Ultima ERP will take from four months to a year of time.
   According to the open industry analytics, neither SAP nor Microsoft can boast a project shorter than a year and a half, and these are the most typical cases.
   Imagine what happens if your business processes turn out to be more complicated than those of a tobacco stall.

4. 
   

   The cost of support and flexibility of the system

   Ultima ERP reflects the best-organized business processes the Customer has, while SAP and others consider the solutions once realized in their practice perfect. Change — rather no, than yes. Or it will cost you a fortune.

   Imagine the situation: Henry Ford invents the chain conveyor and decides to buy the ERP-system right after that. A manager, lets say from SAP, arrives to his office and Henry describes the needs of his business. What answer does he hear: «Henry, with all our respect to you, you talk nonsense. What chain conveyor? Three hundred years of our successful implementations conclusively proved the superiority of the best manufacturing practice in the format of handicraft factory and water wheel.»

   There is no need to specify the address where the representatives will get immediately sent. Imagine a similar scene with, lets say, Sam Walton or Sergey Brin.

   In reality, the mantra about the «best practice» intends to cover the system falls of the architecture and crucial inefficiency of the two-level implementation/support scheme. The implementation is carried out by the local partner.

   Due to poorly designed architecture of the same SAP (which can be easily understood as they have been suffering from it for almost forty years — imagine the hardware and the software back then, for details, please join the brief insight into SAP architecture) the capabilities of the local partner are not sufficient for optimal implementation of the customers’ business processes. That’s why they have to involve the German headquarters to consult their system programmers.

   Now try to imagine the time and cost expenses of the scheme, when your employees explain the situation to the consultants of the partner company (the qualification of these people is another matter), then the needs are outspoken to the German programmers, and the consultants get explained how dumb they actually are and how your business has to work.

   The cycle repeats itself several times with constant effect of whisper down the lane. As a result, you get some feedback. There probably is no need to explain the use of the word «some», as you really do get something totally irrational, that needs lots of time and money, and that will never ever meet your expectations.
   That’s why it’s much easier for the local partners to feed you bum steer about the «best practice» and to demand changes from your business to fit the pattern, rather than do their job — satisfy the needs of the customer.
   By the way, we are not against the changes, and we admit, that in most cases the introduction of Ultima ERP leads to changes. But in this case the needs for innovation are justified by the considerations of business efficiency and maximizing the profits we come to during the re-engineering, they are not imposed by the limitations of our product.

   What do we offer? Modern, designed using the latest technologies, constantly up-to-date and running system. The architecture that has taken into account the mistakes of the predecessors. We are a close-knit team of implementators in constant exchange of information with our system programmers.In other words — fast, cheap and exactly what you needed.

5. 
   

   The solution from an eminent brand is much more important for the IT- director than for the company

   It’s very clear. Giant budget = Giant kickback.
   IT-Director benefits from it in terms of his personal career («I integrated SAP»), as the implementation time is very long, it is an additional guarantee of highly paid not-working in the following few years. Interests of the company are not taken into account, a «reliable brand» remains a brilliant argument, but we all know what is what. Karamzin put it clear long time ago.

   By the way, about the brand. MS Dynamics AX (former Axapta), which is one of the major companies in Russia, has an interest slightly different from zero in all developed markets. On one hand, it proves the level of the sales and lobby of MS in Russia, but on the other it clarifies the real value of the «brand» in the market of ERP systems.

   
   
   
   

   Note. All of the above is applied to the needs of our target audience — medium and big Russian companies.
   To be specific we mean the companies with 15 — 20 thousand employees, whose activities lay mainly in trade and service sectors, and for whom e-sales are an essential part of the business.
   Multinational corporations, multi-giants should clearly stick to SAP. For now. But if you are not Siemens, Sony, or, at worst, Severstal – you are welcome.
   When you grow into an international imperialism tycoon, you won’t have to change accounting system. After all, we are not sitting idly either.

1. 
   

   1C is a feeble software not able to handle even the average number of users

   Simultaneous operation of 1C 7.7 by more than 80 active users is a torture, while operation by more than 150 users is almost impossible. Constant enqueues, buzzes and drop-outs. There are legends about the «1C boosters » that are thought to allow you to work comfortably with 300 or even 400 users. It’s something of the kind of the famous «Internet accelerator». Well, blessed are they that believe.

   The situation with 1C 8.2 seems to be slightly better. However, since the 1C company stays true to its traditions, and the new version of the data base management system driver is as crooked as possible, so that even without the statistics, we may claim that the actual limit for regular work will not go beyond 500 users, or it will run into a brain freeze.

   Feeble means that the growth of the business will sooner or later be constrained by the information system. However, if your company doesn’t intend to grow big the weak point of the 1C is not sufficient and it might be not too bad an management accounting option for you.
   While Ultima ERP really has no upper limit on the number of simultaneous users.

   In our practice there is an obvious example of stable simultaneous operation of the Ultima ERP with more than two thousand active users.The employees were working in different cities but in the common information field.

   
   

   What is common between 1C and Microsoft? That’s right, the same business model: produce [censored — not the best] products and sell them brightly. The models in this case rely on the dubious from the corruption and antitrust perspective methods, such as exclusive agreements with equipment manufacturers and communication with government agencies.

   No wonder that in this case, these two came together too: [censored — not the best corporate information system] 1C [censored — not the best] data base management system MS SQL Server, that in most cases aggregates with 1C «eight».

   So what’s the output? You’re right, the mega [censored — not the best combination].
   The strange as it may seem choice of 1C [censored — not the best]DBMS from a virtually unlimited range of offers can be easily explained by the specific sales talents of Microsoft, that are particularly effective in the Russian reality. We can not be 100% sure, but other explanations — for example, such as that 1C experts are not familiar with the modern DBMS with all our deep respect for colleagues are even less likely.

   What does the Customer get in the end? It’s naive to expect this approach to result in high-quality products and high level of service.

   However, the talented 1C developers taught the version 1C 8.2 (in less than 10 years of time) to work with variational databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle. It should seem a step forward, but 1C sticks to its style: the 1 C kernel implements the behavior of MS SQL-type blocking databases. So the minimum optimization of the system performance with regular databases they supply in the basic configuration was achieved through tricks and twists (our fellow feelings for the developers). But any minimal change of logic, modifying pre-defined mechanisms of the database, results in a severe catastrophe. In general, you can see that the system is very customer-oriented.

   Ultima ERP was originally designed to operate on the basis of the most productive and reliable DBMS in the world, Oracle. Oracle is the DBMS number 1 in the world, with a market share of 48% — more than four nearest competitors put together.
   Ultima is an official partner of Oracle corp.

2. 
   

   1C is not for average minds, I mean businesses. Let alone the big businesses.

   Historically 1C as a management system was designed for the needs of small business: the company of 3, 5, 10, maximum 30 users.
   A small initial functional, simple, and often even primitive business processes, coupled with extensive customization options and superior support of chaotic changes in the requirements of government agencies in the report forms made 1C the monopolist in the lower segment of the market.

   Having mastered this fraction, the 1C company decided to move on to new and more marginal markets. In this case it’s the medium-size companies, with their much higher demands.
   And then, instead of making the decision to develop a separate software product, with architecture, system and logics oriented on the needs of medium and big businesses, colleagues from 1C armed themselves by files and hammers and started the long and painful process of transformation (see the history of v8.0, v8.1, v8.2) of Frankenstein-style «Lada» into a SCANIA. In the end they couldn’t get even a lorry, the result looked like this.
   It’s not a truck, not a passenger car, it doesn’t really go, doesn’t turn, doesn’t pull up, you can’t really load it and God only knows how to fix it in case.
   The logics of the 1C managers is very clear: they apparently found it more advantageous to have a single solution, rather than spend money on development and maintenance of two architecturally different ones(as, for example, SAP and <shitty> SAP Business One).
   It is difficult to say whether these estimates materialized, but what is clear is that such solutions always affect the interests of customers: Forums of the special web-sites (erp-online.ru, sql.ru and others) are full of negative feed-backs from the employees of large companies that had courage to try to implement 1C as an ERP-system. Surprisingly, large projects can’t enjoy the ever-lasting bargaining chip of low costs: in the end it turns out not cheap at all.
   System problems of architecture get coupled with constantly growing complexity of the basic configurations, which requires more and more skills from the implementation professionals. But in the beginning small businesses did not require any highly skilled 1C programmers to implement and modify the products and it was one of the most important strong points of 1C promotion. The conclusion is too obvious to discuss.
   Ultima ERP was originally designed for the needs of medium and big business with sophisticated business processes, large number of active users, requirements for scaling systems, the critical importance of preservation of the information, the need to handle a vast number of transactions, full integration with web-applications and work with huge databases.
   Most of these features are excessive for small companies if only they’re not planning on immediate growth. For small business there is nothing better than 1C, and our solution will be too heavy, too overloaded and inadequately expensive.
   But for medium and big businesses, especially for the ones coupled to Web, it’s just what the doctor ordered.
   Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and a timid horse and deer graze should stay on separate clearings.

3. 
   

   Lack of competitive advantages, you will work just like everybody else does

   Working on the 1C platform makes you work like most other market participants, sharing the cake with you, because they probably also use the most common in our country 1C.
   Business processes are the same, the speeds are the same, the level of costs is about the same too, as a result your abilities are nearly equal, and competitive advantages are technologically unachievable any more. The way to increase the market share lies outside the optimization of the company’s processes, and it’s the customer alone who benefits from the price competition. How long will such short-sighted players last if such a constantly upgrading company with all the modern technologies of process management appears in the market?
   Don’t miss your chance to buy a technological competitive advantage for your company, or the competitors see the business results from the implementation of Ultima ERP before.

   The cost of the support: the price is not higher
   It is believed that 1C has the cheapest support.
   It is true, the market basically offers a lot of «experts» of different levers of unskillfulness that are among other things " able to program in 1C." For some funny peanut money.

   The quality and reliability, as usual, have to do with the price. If a report or a form is usually within their capacity, any serious project, or simply a complex change of business processes is too hard a nut to crack.
   The cost of such work the established companies with at least some hope for quality offer is not any cheaper than that of ours.

4. 
   

   Стоимость поддержки: у нас не дороже

   Deceptive easiness and cheapness of the apparent modification of configurations of 1C in many cases leads to a disaster.

   Unstoppable chaotic changes made without any plan or coordination by constantly changing " 1C programmers " or hired students in some 2-4 years turn a well-balanced basic solution into an indescribable swamp of program code and screen forms, elements of which interact with each other in completely unpredictable ways, and the attempt to dolly something up in one place inevitably leads to an epic fail in another. After all this the 1C becomes a thing in itself, and customers attitude to it can be best described by «do not touch it, it won’t not stink.»

   
   

   How to fix it? Just as one fixes a faulty designed and constructed building — one knocks the hell down and builds it new.
   It will turn out much cheaper, faster and more reliable.

   The construction starts again with the project design, which actually is the re-engineering of the business processes. And that is («... & business processing ») - one of our core competencies. Welcome.

   
   
   

   We would want to clarify that all of the above can be only applied to all 1C solutions in management accounting. There is no other system that can stand next to 1 C if you mean to get a typewriter and a generator of various accounting junk for government agencies. First of all, because of the quality of support and regular updates.
   In 100% of implementations the beloved by the elderly bookkeeper-aunties 1C can be integrated with Ultima ERP.

1. 
   

   Let the cobbler stick to his laast

   Despite the fact that the axiom, by the definition, needs no proof, there again and again are skeptics, who try to deny it on their own experience and using the money of shareholders. They can’t put up with the fact that the development of management accounting systems, as well as any area of human activity, should be carried out with by qualified professionals only.

   I remember the classic "no less than 70% of the people reading these lines have just tried to bite themselves by the elbow."

   I wonder why it has not occurred to any company to write its own operating system for office computers, or, say, their own Bluetooth drivers for the CEO’s iPhone? Or, for example, why not to hire a research team and build a lab to develop their own formula of aspirin for the employees who have caught a flu.
   It sounds funny. But aren’t the ambitions of some "Stroytorgtsentr" LLC to create an ERP-system for internal use even more ridiculous? A complete ERP system is just a little less complex than any other modern operating system.

   Well, you have decided to automate their business on your own. Here and further we assume that your business has outgrown the scope of feeble 1C (which is discussed here).

   Perhaps you:

   • have good experience in managing large software development projects;
   • are perfectly familiar with the current state of the market of ERP-systems, know thoroughly the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed solutions, their functionality and architecture and are able to design a system that would combine advantages and exclude disadvantages of your competitors;
   • deeply understand the market trends and directions of the major players for the next few years (for the period of developing and implementing of your own solutions);
   • you have a knit-up team of high-skilled programmers, especially qualified in the development of applications for modern DBMSs on modern platforms. Your competencies in production and distribution of tasks, assessment and motivation in particular areas are very high;
   • believe that you will be able to ensure the proper quality of production code and documentation while the development — sufficient for the staff programmers who come up as a result of the inevitable turnover to seamlessly integrate into the system of design and / or support, the training of the new staff is well organized.

   All "Yes"? — Congratulations.
   And strongly recommend to consider the possibility of converting your business into the software development. Or, at least, assign this field to some subsidiary. After the announcement of a tender on automation of core business we would be delighted to participate in it together with your daughter and obviously win it.

   No?
   Well then, let us make some suggestions (already affirmed by hundreds of solid foreheads that have been there, and have done that):
   

   • time of the development of your own solution should be multiplied by two or three. Do you estimate a year and a half? It’s three to four then, you may take our word on that. With a probability of 50% the project will never be finished;
   • the uncontrolled growth of costs comes out of the previous statement. We should also note that in 100% of such cases, the labor demands increase during the implementation of the "project" — you may multiply by two for the beginning;
   • for obvious reasons, you will have to freeze all changes in the business for the period of the development. Do you think your competitors will put themselves in your shoes and just wait?
   • The decision will turn out to be dock-tailed and poor. It’s exactly the same as if you tried to compare the cobbled together in a garage car to a LADA, to say nothing of a Mercedes. There is a certain reason for pride: you have put so much effort into it. "But does it actually go? — Well, it’s not the point. " In our case every time you try to implement changes in business to the accounting system, you will constantly bump into obstacles like " we can not do it" "Well, theoretically we can make this in year and a half, but can’t you think of something better? "," No, connection of such type equipment was not taken into account at the development. " In the end you’ll have to adjust the real business to the absurd restrictions of non-professionally designed and implemented crooked system.
   • you will inevitably find yourself strongly dependant on a few programmers and the head of the development project. Should I go deep into details here?

   Well, and now comes the question " what for?"

   An example from life — an interview with Sergei Galitsky, the co-owner of "Magnet", to "Vedomosti".
   The following is an excerpt from the interview, which would be of certain interest in the context of our topic:

   — Do you have your own software to monitor the network performance, or do you use ready-made solutions?
   — All programs are our own, we have about 100 programmers who work on it. The existing solutions do not suit us, and it would be functionally wrong to use it. You can not really do anything to a finished product, but when you write the program yourself you have a chance to customize it for your business. There is nothing to be particularly proud of — it’s just a vitally necessary thing for us. How can one manage a retail company without monitoring the remnants? Although in the end it’s people who control everything. There is no such ephemeral programs that would do everything for you: you just press the button and it tells you what you have and where.
   ...Because you have three million customers every day, you make approximately 2,000 payments to your suppliers every day, you have automatic ordering of goods in each store, the automatic orders to our suppliers, maintaining of range of products in stock. All this with a uneven demand — first holidays, then it’s hot, and later it’s cold. We have a "KAMAZ" full of papers arriving to our head office every day, and this is only to the head office. Can you imagine how to control all this?

   Well, it’s out of the question that Sergey is a skilled retailer, the results the "Magnet" company shows are the best evidence.
   But this talented retailer does not understand a damn thing in IT. This can be simply by the number of programmers.

   We do not hope that honored Sergei Galitsky will ever take time to read this page, we only mean him as an imaginary opponent.

   
   

   Let go step by step:

   — "The existing solutions do not suit us." ." Sergei have you looked at all of them yourself or was it your IT Director to show you around? He’s a person concerned in this case.

   — "There is no such ephemeral programs that would do everything for you: you just press the button and it tells you what you have and where." Sergei, you are mistaken. This is the basic functionality of any storage program (even without the proud name of ERP). If rated honestly, why does one need an ERP-system, not to mention the herd of programmers, if it doesn’t provide the chance to see what’s where with a click of one button? Absolutely all of our clients get the information about the warehouse stocks, transits and other states of their inventory this way. It’s absolutely clear that it takes not only the buttons in the program, but also the correctly aligned business processes to do that.
   But as you know, "we do know how to do it."

   — "...Because you have three million customers every day, you make approximately 2,000 payments to your suppliers every day..." How damn nice it is to show off the scale of the empire you built, right? But we do know that the properly aligned processes serve three thousand people or three million (in terms of software) — with the only difference in the power of the used servers. Especially, if you divide the "three million" by the number of stores, you get the same 2-3 thousand people per day. In general, it’s overall not so impressive, if each store operates on a single system (and this is most likely so, and then there comes the famous shops selling synchronization with the central database and pile of bugs as a result. So, Sergei, is everything fine with that? Not too tight?).

   — You have automatic ordering of goods in each store, the automatic orders to our suppliers, maintaining of range of products in stock... Well, that sounds impressive, but only for those who have no clue about how it works. And since we do it again does not impress us.
   All of your automation is certainly based on an extremely dull assortment matrix for each store, and it’s occasionally manually changed. And accordingly, the primitive output agent constitutes an invoice using the difference between the matrix and the actual stock. And, to say the truth, neither the heat nor the cold, or the uneven demand are taken into account. And the human factor is sure to lead to some skews.The dynamics of demand, the calculation of needs at integrated speed sales, the dependency analysis and a lot of other useful things are simply not taken into any account. You may come to us when you fire the 100 moochers you have for now and we’d share this information with you. The exchange will appreciate it if you manage to raise the revenue by 7-10% per square meter.

   We have a "KAMAZ" full of papers arriving to our head office every day, and this is only to the head office. Can you imagine how to control all this? Of course, not.
   And you can not either. On the other hand we can offer a solution that will relieve you from this paperwork. And if you think that this "KAMAZ" of papers (the "Chechen terrorist KAMAZ ") can be controlled by anyone in your company, we will disappoint you. Despite the fact that the money you spend on this "control" is a lot, it only results in another reason for pride for the amount of processed junk.

   — We have about 100 programmers who work on it. Intuitively, it seems that instead of "it" you meant to say "work on all this crap." 100 programmers is a no laughing matter. This number can be a reason for pride for your IT Director, and at the same time, the reason for grief for you and your shareholders: a 100 of most likely well paid moochers.
   You can imagine how much money has been altogether spent for nothing on this "software". And the result? Some kind of crap. The kind of crap that can not even show the current position of the goods, and the kind of crap that positions the primitive functional of autogeneration of invoices on the base of the assortment matrix, that will take any third-year student a half an hour to write in Excel, as a crown jewel.
   every now and then). In the rare hours they may do something really useful at the request of other departments but only provided that these departments raise a hue and cry of the "If you do not do this week,
   [it’s all over]..." So the waiting list of the tasks to be implemented is some months long, the order of implementation doesn’t depend on the actual need or the queue, but only on the loudest hue and cry, and your IT director is always complaining about the overload and a lack of human resources.
   For your consideration: the largest domestic software company (in our market at least), 1C, employs about 200 programmers.
   With all our prepossession towards the colleagues, we have to admit that their products are used by millions of people (compare it to the number of employees in your company, we bet not more than 10% actually work with the system).
   And the diversity of even basic configurations, not to mention the customized ones is worthy of respect. That’s the most simple benchmarking, that answers all the questions about effectiveness.

   Homo errare est, and people are also very persistent in their errors.
   We are very sure that while Sergei is the head of Magnet, the company’s IT strategy is unlikely to change.
   But the morning sun never lasts a day. Do you, Sergei, know what will the first undertaking of the new management (once it comes in) be? Yes, you’re right — the implementation of SAP.

   
   

   In general, there is one claim, Sergei, we totally agree with: "There is nothing to be particularly proud of." You’ve said a mouthful. Of course, we mean the IT side of your business as the achievements of your business in the core competencies are needless to say.

   Due to the size, "Magnet" company can boast the ability to spend some millions on such cute toys.

   Russia is some decades behind the developed markets in terms of development of the food retail sector. Virtually no competitive environment makes it possible to cover losses created by the inefficient management by adding some five percent to the price or pulling an extra penny from the suppliers (as we all know, "one supplier — a penny, but a hundred suppliers — a dollar.") It’s also a good option to use second-rate meat for the ready-to-use BBQ or chop the faded greens down in salads.

   And do you, dear reader, have some extra couple millions? Does your business enjoy the same hothouse conditions with always pliant suppliers and buyers, that have almost no choice?

   If so, we are extremely happy for you. In this case we suggest you pay attention to something more hedonistic than the EPR systems, such as collecting modern art.

   And if not — welcome. Ultima ERP is a system for efficient business in the competitive environment, rather than for an empire a la "KAMAZ of papers."