Peter,
I've used both systems, and can offer the following:
Manex (xERP, last I knew) is a pretty inclusive set of manufacturing, inventory, accounting, and planning set of software. I used mostly the manufacturing side of things, and found that, from a material planning viewpoint, and a process control viewpoint, it was very well done. I never got too involved with the accounting side of things, but I did get to observe my Controller having headaches on a monthly basis. My understanding was that the accounting module wasn't as well done, and the commmunication between the two modules wasn't great.
I'll also note that it's been four years since I was using xERP, and it's entirely possible that they've continued to work out the bugs. At the time, there was a pretty large community of Manex haters out there...I think they even had their own anti-Manex mailing list...mostly installed users that were very upset over the support they were receiving from the company.
I think the biggest lesson we learned about xERP was that we really needed to change our processes to accomodate the system. For two years, we attempted to force the system to work the way we wanted to...with much pain involved. We met with another company that had been relatively successful, and their method had been to modify their processes.
I used DBA at my last job, and found it to be a pretty decent system, considering the cost. The downfall for us was that it was a pretty old version of the system, and we weren't going to pay for upgrades. Having said that, I was pretty impressed with the way it managed BOM structures, and MRP. However, we had issues extracing information from it the way we wanted to. Again, it's entirely possible that the issues we encountered have been fixed in newer releases.
From a cost perspective, you seem to be looking at both ends of the spectrum. Whichever way you land, be prepared for a lengthy transition process...and don't rush it. Test out the systems, determine how to use them, and modify your procedures to allow using the new systems. It'll cause you much less pain in the long run.
cheers ..rob
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