Welcome to the fifth annual BackOffice supplement. This year, we changed the name of the supplement from "BackOffice Accounting" to "BackOffice ERP." The name change reflects the fact that most of the business management application suites now running on the Microsoft BackOffice technology platform cover a wider functional scope than just financial accounting, which has become largely a commodity application—the differences between financial suites' core accounting modules so minor that buyers look for value in other areas.

Bac...