How to Build Your ERP System in Minutes

Do you need an effective way to manage and optimize your business operations? Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are the perfect tools to help you do just that. With an ERP system, you can manage various tasks, including financial management, supply chain management, project management, and customer relationship management. While these systems can be expensive and complex to purchase and implement, you can build your system in a relatively short amount of time. This article will discuss the steps to create your ERP system from scratch, using open-source software and other readily available resources. With this knowledge, you can benefit from the power of an ERP system without the expensive cost of purchasing a commercial solution. So, if you’re looking for an efficient, cost-effective way to manage your business operations, trust the expert advice in this article and read on to find out how to create your ERP system from scratch.

What is an ERP?

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is a centralized platform that helps organizations manage their business processes and data across various departments and functions, such as finance, human resources, supply chain, and operations. It streamlines multiple processes, such as accounting, inventory management, and project management, and provides real-time data visibility and insights to help organizations make informed decisions.

Modern ERP solutions include in particular important business areas such as

Financials & Accounting. This includes financial management, budgeting, accounting, and cash flow management. 

Human Resources (HR). This includes payroll, time and attendance, recruitment, benefits, and training management. 

Supply Chain Management. This includes inventory and warehouse management, order management, supplier management, and logistics management. 

Manufacturing. This includes production planning and scheduling, quality control, and cost management. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This includes sales automation, marketing automation, customer service, customer analytics, and customer support. 

Business Intelligence. This includes data mining, data visualization, predictive analytics, and dashboard reporting.

Analytics. This includes predictive analytics, data mining, and machine learning.

Building your ERP system from scratch can be a daunting task, but with the right tools and resources, it can be done in a matter of minutes. Here’s how you can get started:

Identify your business needs and objectives. The first step in building an ERP system is determining what you need it to do for your organization. Consider your current business processes and identify the pain points and inefficiencies that an ERP system could address. Determine what features and functionality are essential for your business and prioritize them accordingly.

Choose the right platform. There are many options available when it comes to choosing an ERP platform, including open-source options and commercial options. Consider factors such as the cost, scalability, integrations, and user-friendliness of the platform when making your decision.

Set up and configure the platform. Once you’ve chosen an ERP platform, it’s time to set it up and configure it to meet your specific business needs. This may involve importing data from your existing systems, creating custom modules or integrations, and setting up user roles and permissions.

Train your team. An ERP system is only as good as the people using it, so it’s essential to provide training to your team to ensure they are comfortable and proficient with the new system. This may involve in-person training sessions, online tutorials, or other resources to help your team get up to speed quickly.

Go live and monitor performance. Once your ERP system is set up and configured, it’s time to go live and start using it for your day-to-day operations. Monitor the performance of the system and make any necessary adjustments or improvements as needed.

The key steps and processes of ERP software development

Requirements Gathering

Requirements Gathering involves gathering information about the customer’s business needs and processes and identifying specific requirements for the ERP software. This includes understanding the customer’s current business operations, their goals and objectives, any existing software they use, and any changes they may need to make. The requirements-gathering process also involves identifying and documenting functional requirements, such as the types of data that need to be captured, the types of reports that need to be generated, and any other processes or activities that need to be automated. This information is used to help the ERP development team design and develop the software.

System Design

After requirements gathering, the ERP development team will design the system based on the customer’s requirements. System Design is the process of designing the software architecture and user interface to meet the customer’s requirements. This includes designing the database structure, the user interface, the business logic, and any integrations with other systems. The design process also involves creating user stories, which describe the actions a user can take with the software, and identifying potential use cases. This information is used to create the software architecture and user interface that will be used to develop the software.

Development

Once the system design is approved, the development team will begin to develop the software according to the design. Development is the process of coding and testing the software according to the system design. This includes writing code to implement the user interface and business logic, as well as testing the software to ensure that it meets the customer’s requirements. This is an iterative process, which involves making changes to the code based on feedback from the customer and testing the changes to ensure that they are functioning correctly.

Deployment

Once the software is developed, it must be deployed to the customer’s environment. Deployment is the process of setting up the hardware and installing the software in the customer’s environment. This includes configuring the hardware, installing the software, and performing data migration and integration with other systems. The deployment process also involves setting up user accounts, configuring security settings, and testing the system to ensure that it is functioning correctly.

Training and Support 

After deployment, the customer must be trained on how to use the software. Training and Support is the process of providing the customer with training and technical support to ensure they can use the software effectively. This includes providing user manuals and tutorials, providing access to customer support teams, and providing ongoing maintenance and updates. The customer must be trained on how to use the software, and the ERP development team must provide ongoing support to ensure that the customer can use the software effectively.

The cost of custom ERP software development

The cost of custom ERP software development depends on the scope of your project. Typically, the cost of custom ERP development ranges from $50,000 to millions. Factors that influence the cost include the complexity of the project, the size of the project, the development team, and the technology used. Additionally, if you are implementing an ERP system within an existing software architecture, there may be additional costs associated with integrating the existing architecture with the ERP.

The cost of custom ERP software development also depends on the features and capabilities included in the software. For example, if you need an ERP system that tracks inventory and accounting information, the cost of development will be higher than for a system that only tracks customer and sales data. Additionally, the cost of custom ERP software development may also depend on the type of software development methodology used. For example, agile software development processes typically cost more than traditional waterfall methods. Furthermore, the cost of custom ERP software development may be higher if you require the software to be hosted in the cloud, or if the system requires custom integrations with other software.

Pros & Cons of building ERP Systems

Pros of Building a Custom ERP System

There are several benefits to implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in an organization:

Improved efficiency and productivity: ERP systems streamline various business processes, such as accounting, inventory management, and project management, and provide real-time data visibility, which helps organizations make informed decisions and increase efficiency.
Enhanced data accuracy and integrity: With an ERP system, data is entered only once and is then shared across all relevant departments and functions. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors and inconsistencies, resulting in improved data accuracy and integrity.
Greater collaboration and communication: An ERP system provides a centralized platform for all departments to share information and collaborate on projects, which improves communication and decision-making across the organization.
Increased scalability and flexibility: ERP systems are designed to be scalable and flexible, allowing organizations to easily add new modules or integrations as their needs change. This helps organizations adapt to changing market conditions and grow their business.
Reduced costs: ERP systems can help organizations save money by streamlining processes, reducing the need for manual data entry, and eliminating the need for multiple software systems.

Overall, implementing an ERP system can help organizations improve efficiency, increase data accuracy and integrity, enhance collaboration and communication, increase scalability and flexibility, and reduce costs.

Cons of Building a Custom ERP System

The main problems when building ERP systems include: 

Complexity: ERP systems are complex, and require knowledge and skills to set up and maintain them. This complexity can make it difficult for businesses to understand how to use and configure the system correctly. It can also make it difficult to troubleshoot any issues that arise. 
Cost: ERP systems can be expensive to purchase and maintain, and may require additional hardware and software investments. The cost of an ERP system can be high, and the cost of maintaining and updating the system must also be taken into consideration. 
Vendor Lock-in: Once you have chosen an ERP system, you may be locked into that vendor’s products and services, and unable to switch to another vendor without high costs. This can make it difficult to switch vendors if the current vendor’s services are no longer meeting your needs. 
Integration: ERP systems must be integrated with other systems, such as financial and CRM systems, to be effective. This can be a difficult and time-consuming process and may require additional resources and expertise. 
Security: ERP systems must be secure, as they contain valuable business data. This requires careful planning and implementation and may involve additional security measures, such as encryption and two-factor authentication.

How to create an ERP system using the Flatlogic Platform in minutes

Flatlogic is a company that provides a range of web and mobile application templates and UI components. They offer Full-Stack Generator to build an ERP system by yourself or/and a various number of templates for an ERP system, which is a type of software that helps businesses manage and coordinate various aspects of their operations, such as financials, supply chain, manufacturing, HR, and more. This template includes a range of features and functionality that can be customized to meet the specific needs of an organization, such as CRM, project management, inventory management, and more. It is designed to be responsive and user-friendly and can be easily integrated with other systems and applications. It is worth noting that an ERP template is not a complete ERP system, but rather a starting point that can be customized and developed further to meet an organization’s specific needs.

Flatlogic Full Stack Generator is a tool that helps you create a fully functional full-stack application from scratch. It provides templates for the frontend and backend of the stack, as well as database connections and authentication features. The generator also comes with a range of customizable components, such as user interface elements, forms, and dashboards. Once you’ve chosen your templates and components, you can easily customize and extend the application to meet your specific needs.

Flatlogic Platform provides a ChatGPT+ solution that enables you to create a conversational chatbot for your website or application. The solution can be customized to your exact requirements and includes features such as natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning algorithms, and real-time analytics. Flatlogic’s ChatGPT+ solution can help you create a powerful and sophisticated chatbot that can provide your customers with an engaging and interactive experience.

How does it work?

Using the Flatlogic Platform you can create CRUD and static applications in a few minutes. Creating a full-stack application consists of 3 steps and static only 2 steps.

Step 1. Choosing the Tech Stack

In this step, you’re setting the name of your application and choosing the stack: Frontend, Backend, and Database.

Step 2. Choosing the Starter Template

In this step, you’re choosing the design of the web app.

Step 3. Schema Editor

In this step, you can create your database schema from scratch, import an existing schema or select one of the suggested schemas. 

To import your existing database, click the Import SQL button and select your .sql file. After that, your database will be opened in the Schema Editor where you can further edit your data (add/edit/delete entities).

If you are not familiar with database design and find it difficult to understand what tables are, we have prepared some ready-made sample schemas of real applications that you can modify for your application:

E-commerce app;
Time tracking app;
Book store;
Chat (messaging) app;
Blog.

Or, you can define a database schema and add a description by clicking on the “Generate with AI” button. You need to type the application’s description in the text area and hit “Send”. The application’s schema will be ready in around 15 seconds. You may either hit deploy immediately or review the structure to make manual adjustments.

Step 4. Choose Integration method & Features

Next, you can connect your GitHub and push your application code there. Or skip this step by clicking the Finish and Deploy button and in a few minutes, your application will be generated.

Benefits of ERP systems created with Flatlogic Platform

An ERP system created using the Flatlogic platform may offer several benefits, such as:

Improved efficiency

An ERP system can help streamline and automate various business processes, reducing the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors. This can save time and resources, and allow employees to focus on more important tasks.

Better decision-making

An ERP system can provide real-time data and insights that can help managers and decision-makers make informed decisions.

Increased visibility

An ERP system can provide a single, centralized source of data that can be accessed by authorized users throughout an organization. This can improve communication and collaboration, and help ensure that everyone is working from the same set of accurate and up-to-date information.

Enhanced security

An ERP system can help protect sensitive data and ensure that it is only accessed by authorized users. It can also help meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Reduced costs

An ERP system can help reduce the costs associated with manual processes, such as paper-based systems and manual data entry. It can also help reduce the costs of training new employees, as they can easily access the information they need to perform their tasks.

It is worth noting that the specific benefits of an ERP system created using the Flatlogic platform will depend on the specific features and functionality implemented, as well as how well the system is customized and integrated with an organization’s existing systems and processes.

Summing Up

In conclusion, building your ERP system can be a daunting task for many businesses. However, with the right tools and resources, it is possible to build a powerful, custom ERP system in minutes. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can quickly create a customized ERP system that meets your business needs and saves you time and money. By taking the time to research, design, and deploy an ERP system, your business can reap the benefits of a centralized and efficient system that can help you increase efficiency and profitability.

The post How to Build Your ERP System in Minutes appeared first on Flatlogic Blog.

Flatlogic Admin Templates banner

Creating full-stack web applications based on database schema for free!

Today, we’re excited to announce the free pricing plan for our CRUD tool. That means that more customers than ever before can use Flatlogic for creating a proper CRUD React/Vue/Angular web application based on the database schema.

What can you do with the free plan for the CRUD tool

You can expect the same features and functionality whether you choose our Paid access or Free option. But obviously with some limitations:

Create up to 10 applications on different technology stacks: React, Vue, Angular, Node.js, Laravel, PostgreSQL, MySQL
Create a full-fledged CRUD application (up to 3 database entities) with code written using best practices
Download or push source code to Github an unlimited number of times
Preview the code before downloading/pushing it on Github
Get updates on libraries used in your app stack
Host instantly your application demo and see the latest deployment logs

Free vs Paid access to the CRUD tool: Choose what you need

Since launching Flatlogic, we see constant growth in the creation of CRUD applications. But we understand that not all of our users need the full functionality of the CRUD tool. We also understand that in the modern world of developer tools, before investing huge resources in mastering new tools, you want to get some value here and now for free – with this motivation we introducing a free plan for creating CRUD applications.

Thus the free plan fits your needs. If you:

Want quickly prototype the CRUD app

Want to test or get familiar with new technologies before investing much time in them
See the best practice on how to organize modern CRUD apps using best practices
Prefer to use starter kits/boilerplates while starting CRUD web applications

And while our Professional plan has always offered a more enhanced way to create CRUD applications, it also required additional steps to understand your needs before getting access.

Now, you can sign up for a free account for a CRUD tool, create applications in minutes, and understand without any hassle whether Flatlogic fits your needs or not.

Create a CRUD app for free!

The post Creating full-stack web applications based on database schema for free! appeared first on Flatlogic Blog.Flatlogic Admin Templates banner

Build Your Own Little Menu Bar App for All Those Things you Forget

I have a little Pinned Pen of Things I Forget that I revisit quite a bit… when… I forget… things. It occurred to me the other day that it would be even more convenient as a menu bar app (macOS) than a Pen. Maybe an excuse to learn Swift? Nahhh. There’s always an app for that. I know Fluid can do that, but I wasn’t 100% sure if that’s up to date anymore or what. As I happen to be a Setapp subscriber, I know they have Unite as well, which is very similar.

So let’s do this! (This is a macOS thing, for the record.)

1) Make a little website of Things You Forget that allows you to one-click copy to clipboard.

You don’t need a special URL or anything for it. And good news, CodePen Projects can deploy your Project to a URL with a click.

Here’s my example Project.

2) Deploy it

Now I click that Deploy button in the footer and can kick it out to a live-on-the-internet URL easily.

3) Turn it into a Menu Bar App with Unite

Then I launch Unite and give it the barebones information it needs:

That’ll instantly make the app. It takes like 2 seconds. From here, two things:

Paste a better image into the Get Info window so you can have a cool icon.
If you’re on an M1 Mac, you might have to click the “Open using Rosetta” icon in order for it to work.

That second one is a little unfortunate. Makes me wish I tried Fluid, but hey, this ultimately worked. You’ll know you need to do it if you see this:

4) Enjoy

A totally custom-designed app to help your own brain!

The post Build Your Own Little Menu Bar App for All Those Things you Forget appeared first on CodePen Blog.Flatlogic Admin Templates banner

Announcing .NET MAUI Preview 13

The 13th preview of .NET Multi-platform App UI is now available in Visual Studio 17.2 Preview 1. In addition to quality improvements, this release includes several implementations such as Label.FormattedText as we close in on feature complete for the upcoming release.

This entire page is a single Label control, mimicking the Windows font preview!

<Label LineBreakMode=”NoWrap” LineHeight=”1.4″>
<Label.FormattedText>
<FormattedString>
<Span Text=”Font name: Default ”/>
<Span Text=”Version: 1.00 ”/>
<Span Text=”Digitally Signed, TrueType Outlines ”/>
<Span Text=”abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz “/>
<Span Text=”abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ” TextTransform=”Uppercase”/>
<Span Text=”1234567890.:,;’+-*/= ”/>
<Span Text=”12 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”12″/>
<Span Text=”18 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”18″/>
<Span Text=”24 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”24″/>
<Span Text=”36 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”36″/>
<Span Text=”48 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”48″/>
<Span Text=”60 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”60″/>
<Span Text=”72 The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890 ” FontSize=”72″/>
</FormattedString>
</Label.FormattedText>
</Label>

Additional highlights include:

New .NET MAUI documentation for many topics from XAML fundamentals and advanced topics, to bindable and attached properties, and RelativeLayout

Documentation for building Blazor Hybrid apps with .NET MAUI, WPF, and Windows Forms.
Label.FormattedText (#3637)
ListView (#3916 #3817 #4193)
Performance – Remove MS.Extensions.Hosting (#4505)
RadioButton (#3784)
SwipeView (#3987 #4064 #4026)
WinUI Flyout (#3735)
WinUI TabbedPage (#4257)
WebView: CanGoBack, CanGoForward, Eval, GoBack, GoForward, Reload

Find more details in our release notes, and in the migration guide.

One of the key .NET alignment inspired design decisions we’ve made in .NET MAUI is to adopt the Microsoft.Extensions builder pattern for bootstrapping applications.

Bootstrapping in .NET MAUI: Focus on MauiProgram

Through the course of our previews, we have heard loud and clear that you love the startup pattern in .NET MAUI. We’ve also made adjustments along the way to improve the developer experience, polish our usage, and collaborate with other .NET app model teams to arrive at a great solution for .NET MAUI developers. In this release, we’ve made another adjustment removing Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting in favor of a faster app startup time, specifically for Android. Let’s take a closer look at how a .NET MAUI app starts up each platform, and what all you can do to configure your app.

Platform App Classes

Every platform has its own native application class where you might do platform-specific setup. On Windows this is the WinUIApplication. Each of these applications will use “MauiProgram.cs” to create your MauiApp.

public partial class App : MauiWinUIApplication
{
public App()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

protected override MauiApp CreateMauiApp() => MauiProgram.CreateMauiApp();
}

Android has MainApplication, and iOS and macOS use AppDelegate. While you can put code here to do specific things, we recommend instead doing everything in MauiProgram. A barebones implementation looks like this:

namespace WeatherTwentyOne;

public static class MauiProgram
{
public static MauiApp CreateMauiApp()
{
var builder = MauiApp.CreateBuilder();
builder
.UseMauiApp<App>();

return builder.Build();
}
}

So what kind of work can you do here in the CreateMauiApp method? This is where you will:

RegisterBlazorMauiWebView – to enable this control and related services in your app

ConfigureEffects – to register Xamarin.Forms Effects in this .NET MAUI handler architecture

ConfigureEssentials – to perform Essentials related setup. See microsoft/dotnet-podcasts for examples

ConfigureFonts – to register fonts with an alias

ConfigureImageSources – to override image sources in order to perform custom work such as filetype conversion

ConfigureMauiHandlers – set a custom handler as your implementation, or a 3rd-party option

Let’s say you want to replace the platform-specific implementation of an Entry control with the Fluent Design Entry control from the Maui.Graphics.Controls project. After including the NuGet package in your project, you can now configure controls to use an alternate handler implementation.

var builder = MauiApp.CreateBuilder();
builder
.UseMauiApp<App>()
.ConfigureMauiHandlers(handlers => {
handlers.AddHandler(typeof(Entry), typeof(Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.Controls.EntryHandler));
})

To make this even more convenient, library developers can provide custom builder extensions to do this for you. If I want all of my controls to render with Maui.Graphics.Controls for a Fluent implementation, I can use a convenient extension.

var builder = MauiApp.CreateBuilder();
builder
.UseMauiApp<App>()
.ConfigureGraphicsControls(DrawableType.Fluent)

Dependency Injection

The MauiProgram is also where you will configure your DI container. The .NET Podcast app does a clean job of demonstrating this in action with extension methods. MauiProgram.cs looks like this:

public static MauiApp CreateMauiApp()
{
var builder = MauiApp.CreateBuilder();
builder
.RegisterBlazorMauiWebView()
.UseMauiApp<App>()
.ConfigureEssentials()
.ConfigureServices()
.ConfigureViewModels()
.ConfigureFonts(fonts =>
{
fonts.AddFont(“Segoe-Ui-Bold.ttf”, “SegoeUiBold”);
fonts.AddFont(“Segoe-Ui-Regular.ttf”, “SegoeUiRegular”);
fonts.AddFont(“Segoe-Ui-Semibold.ttf”, “SegoeUiSemibold”);
fonts.AddFont(“Segoe-Ui-Semilight.ttf”, “SegoeUiSemilight”);
});

Barrel.ApplicationId = “dotnetpodcasts”;

return builder.Build();
}

Digging into ConfigureServices we see setup the BlazorWebView control, singletons, transients, scoped dependencies, and even the HttpClient implementation. View the source here.

Shell and DI – last release we featured the new constructor injection support when using Shell as your application navigation context. Until this issue is resolved, you will need to register your pages in addition to any injectables in order for the DI to succeed.

Platform Lifecycle Events

When you have need to do custom setup based on platform events, .NET MAUI provides lifecycle events right in your multi-targeted code. WinUI has a property to control if your content should extend into the title bar area or not. To access, you can do this:

builder.ConfigureLifecycleEvents(lifecycle => {
#if WINDOWS
lifecycle
.AddWindows(windows =>
windows.OnNativeMessage((app, args) => {
app.ExtendsContentIntoTitleBar = false;
}));
#endif
});

Removing Hosting and Disabling Logging

It was identified that Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting was not needed in a .NET MAUI app, and removing it would improve Android app started by approximately 13% on a blank application. As you can see from the examples above, you can still do the most useful things with Hosting removed. Hosting was overhead we didn’t need. For more details on this change, Eric Erhardt has provided a thorough write-up here.

Hand in hand with this change, we have also made the change to disable logging for release builds.

Get Started Today

.NET MAUI Preview 13 is bundled with Visual Studio 17.2 Preview 1 available today with the latest productivity improvements for .NET MAUI development. If you are using Visual Studio 2022 17.1 Preview 2 or newer, you can upgrade to 17.2 Preview 1.

If you are upgrading from an earlier version, have been using maui-check, or run into installation problems, we recommend starting from a clean slate by uninstalling all .NET 6 previews and Visual Studio 2022 previews. Please report any issues through Help > Send Feedback

Starting from scratch? Install this Visual Studio 2022 Preview (17.2 Preview 1) and confirm .NET MAUI (preview) is checked under the “Mobile Development with .NET workload”.

Ready? Open Visual Studio 2022 and create a new project. Search for and select .NET MAUI.

Preview 13 release notes are on GitHub. For additional information about getting started with .NET MAUI, refer to our documentation.

Feedback Welcome

Please let us know about your experiences using .NET MAUI to create new applications by engaging with us on GitHub at dotnet/maui.

For a look at what is coming in future .NET 6 releases, visit our product roadmap, and for a status of feature completeness visit our status wiki.

The post Announcing .NET MAUI Preview 13 appeared first on .NET Blog.

Flatlogic Admin Templates banner

Create Your App Like Windows 11 in React

Description:

If you are looking to create your app like windows 11 with same look and feel using React then you may try this UI component.

How can I use it?

You will need to download the component from GitHub using above ‘Download’ button and start using it.

Preview:

The post Create Your App Like Windows 11 in React appeared first on Lipku.com.