PowERPro 3.1

Aimed at SMEs, this Windows-based ERP software includes Inventory, Purchase Management, Human Resources, Financial Accounting and Manufacturing, Sales Distribution, Quality Control and Plant Maintenance with Borland’s Interbase as back-end. The software is yet to be launched and we got to have a sneak peek at it. We found it packing in all the required ERP components and covering them in sufficient detail. The server can run on a PIII with 128 (preferably 256) MB RAM.

The software provides Masters, Enquiry, Transactions and Reports according to each function. 

Notably, in Purchase Management you can capture data separately for imports and local purchases, which is a very good feature. There’s also tracking of Purchase Order Amendments, which are managed on the latest Purchase Order basis–as in you don’t get to see a list of all the amendments that have taken place, which would have been nice.

The Materials Requirement in Inventory tracks required quantity, issued quantity balance required, current stock, minimum stock and recommended order quantity. These details are very useful and can streamline materials planning if implemented well. You also get to see the same for Latest Rate, Standard Rate and Average Rate, which again makes this one of the best features of the software. 

The Manufacturing module covers all the essential data along with user-defined costing format in the Manufacturing Masters.

Financial Accounting captures all transactions and also PDCs and Budget Entries. Vouchers are posted in bulk or selective batches. There are all the regular and MIS reports. You also have a Query Builder where you can create your own queries for different accounts, on different parameters. This is quite useful. 

The Human Capital Management function has a lot of comprehensive data capture and reports. You can set up Periodic Processing, which is where the Payrolls are processed by tagging the relevant accounts and mapping them to the payment and deduction components in the configuration. This will ensure changes are reflected in your accounts. 

Quality Control captures CheckPoints (optional) and Complaints among other things, but does not provide unique compliant codes, which may be a problem if you want to track the progress of the complaints and their closures. You do have a remarks column that can be used to track complaints manually. 

Reports can be exported into MS Excel CSV files, plain text files, ODBC-compliant databases, Crystal Reports, Word, RTF and a few more text-based formats. 

Security-wise there’s access control for various modules and within modules, various screens. Users can also be given blanket permission with some options blocked. 

S N   A   P   S   H O   T Price : USD 5000 (INR price not announced yet) Key specs : Small-scale ERP software with all the essential modules Pros : Comprehensive at an affordable price, can be customized at extra cost Contact : Visesh Infotecnics, Gurgaon. Tel : 5013493/94.  E-mail : amittal@viseshinfo.com

The product is offered by Visesh Infotecnics who have two other ERP suites called BusinessSoft and BusinessPro. The company works on a 21 days implementation schedule and charges separately for the same. You can also get customized add-on modules like Excise, CRM and

SCM. 

Overall, the product is a valiant effort to provide as much enterprise-wide resource planning and optimization as possible, at a very affordable price. But the devil may be in the implementation. 

Shruti Pareek with inputs from Gautam Mukherjee