ERP: Visual Basic/ Studio.NET or JAVA

I program in both VB.NET and Java. Personally I feel that VB.NET is much more powerful and will have a much longer life when you are dealing with Windows (Microsoft created it after all). Java however will have more portability with it. It will be much easier to port to other operating systems if you would like. Both of them can provide the same user-friendly enviroment that you are looking for. That just depends on the programmer. If you are interested in another proposal my company offers cutom programming. You can visit us at www.whitetech.net
Hope this helps.

As a professional in the ERP business for 15 years implementing every major ERP package except for SAP and writing a JAVA ERP system and a VB.NET based ERP system, I can assure you that a .NET system would provide you with the best value, upgrade structure, and even stable and familiar user interface.

It is very risky to develop ERP from scratch from a proposal. It is even further complicated by your business which is lot-controlled food processing and distribution. Make sure your development partner is fully competent with your business processes.

I will also offer the VB.NET ERP package my firm has written as a jumping off point. I am willing to license the full code to your firm for total customization by whatever development partner you choose. It may be able to cut significant development time from your project. The package offered is designed for a complex distribution company. Contact me if you are at all interested.

The dependency is upon your budget and the set of expectations from the stakeholders. I do not believe you have sufficient budget to write an ERP using either platform and most likely you have an unrealistic set of expectations from your stakeholders. The reason being today's ERP is expected to provide a completely integrated set of business modules that handle the back office functions on top of a framework providing open operating system and database connectivity and services, metadata and dictionary repositories, business content, integration (2 ways), user interfaces, process logic, business logic, application server. Also needed are components such as portal, mobile interfaces, data interchange interfaces, business intelligence, master data and transactional data management. If the user wants people integration from your ERP, you need to code for multi-channel access and collaboration on top of the portal. You appear to be stuck on the littlest component - the user interface component.