An Analytical Survey of Free/Open Source ERP Systems and their Potential Marketplace in Brazil

Background

There are different criteria in the market that can be used to rank organizations by its size, according to the context in which the analysis is done. Mercosul, NAFTA and The European Union, for example, adopt their own official classifications, different from each other. Some commonly used criteria are: (Longenecker et al., 1997):

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  Number of employees

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  Sales amount

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  Financial status

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  Assets value

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  Workforce insurance

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  Warehouse volumes

The increasingly strained competition and the consequent increase in market requirements have brought to small and medium enterprises needs of organization and control in levels previously required only by large companies. On the other side, the trend of higher costs withdraws small and medium enterprises from the major P-ERP systems. Since they have less favorable credit terms than large companies and therefore are more sensitive to economic cycles, this inhibits their efforts with technological improvements (la Rovere, 2001).