ERP has often been defined as one of the technical aspects of a business. While this definition is not entirely wrong, it does not cover the scope of support that enterprise business applications provide to the many facets of a company. Proper enterprise business application deployment has a profound impact on the human and business aspects of an organization. The chief among them being role alignment, integration of individual goals with the company strategy, tightening of compliance, improvement of the bottom line, and mitigation of fraudulent instances, to name just a few.
Enterprise Business Applications: 9 Technical Impacts
This blog, which is the third part of the series on the impacts of ERP will focus on the many technical benefits that an organization can expect from the deployment of the right ERP solutions. In this article, we will focus on some of the main impacts on the technical aspects of a company:
1) Improved performance and productivity
Performance of the production line and improvement of productivity is something that concerns any business. ERP can help in this aspect by enabling the availability of a centralized repository and syncing with an updated database. When the base data is free of errors, a lot of guesswork and dependence on empirical instances is automatically reduced. Having a common source of instructions and direction to work on will enable easier communication and coordination. Want to learn more? Read about this on our blog on ‘Factoring MES into your integration equation.’
2) Informed decision-making
In the earlier manufacturing scenario (until about a couple of decades back), there were instances when a business would have as many as 30–40 decentralized applications. These applications in most situations would not be connected, which would translate to a nightmarish scenario where each decision would have to go through various applications to get the right inputs. By the time all the information would be assimilated, some of it would not even be current. Such a situation would always have an adverse effect on the decision-making process. ERP has made it easier with a centralized approach, dashboards that offer information at a click, and deep insights into any aspect that needs to be considered. To learn about how you can maximize your efficiency with ERP solutions, click here.
3) Increased investment in the core business
ERP was often shunned or avoided due to the enormous cost involved. There is no doubt that many companies avoided the deployment of ERP solutions to their business much to their detriment due to the enormity of investment and the resources needed to manage it. However, today that is not the case; you have cloud ERP that is light in terms of the resources required but competent in providing the support necessary. Organizations have the advantage of an independent vendor and their team handling this aspect so that they can focus their investment and attention on their core business. Want to know how you can further control software costs?
4) Delivery of better products
The world is changing almost at a frantic pace, and when you consider this from a business point of view it means constantly evolving to supply the kind of products that customers do not even know they want. Which means staying ahead of the curve to deliver the latest and the best. When the right ERP solution supports a business, they get access to technologies like IoT and AI. These technologies let a business study how the product is being used and why it is performing the way it is. Having this information on hand, can speed up the product improvement process and help in delivering the right product to the right segment of customers. Discover how a manufacturer can use IoT to improve quality of products and thereby profitability.
5) Quicker-to-market innovation
Innovation is not just a buzzword today; it is a mode of survival, and a means to win the race. However, to be able to do this, a business needs to be consistently innovative. With the implementation of solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for finance and operations that has a monthly release cadence with current issues and new functionalities, it becomes easy to quicken the innovation cycle. The availability of the latest functionalities allows organizations to leverage technology better. The result is more innovation, more in-depth study of data collected from product and customer interactions. All these factors help companies bring innovative products and services quicker-to-market.
6) Tightening of inventory
Inventory is an often-ignored aspect of a manufacturing or trading unit until it becomes a significant cost factor that drains resources. How can ERP help in this? ERP helps in this process by ensuring that the product specifications did not depend on manual entry but decided on an engineering plan. The system can make sure that variations if any are minimal and do not add to the cost of the parts that are being ordered. A study of the reports generated would also ensure that most frequently used parts are ordered more often and working capital is not wasted on components that are used rarely. Click here to discover the reasons why a manufacturing business needs to integrate warehouse management.
7) Manual errors are minimized
The first factor to be comprehended here is that while there is no discounting the contribution of humans in business, the same element can also lead to manual errors. ERP can step into just such a situation acting as a failsafe. Which is to say, have checkpoints in the system that will allow for the parameters to be met. Organizations can even make meeting certain conditions a prerequisite to proceeding to the next level, and this can bring down instances of manual errors dramatically. The creation of such checks and an audit trail can be beneficial. ERP can help integrate PLM (product lifecycle management) with ERP solutions like Dynamics 365 for finance and operations to ensure that the right parts are used and errors are minimized.
8) Enhance customer experience
The customer is central to the success or failure of any business. If a company lives up to customer expectations to a large extent while managing other aspects efficiently, it can consider itself a success. The aim of every company should be to deliver customer satisfaction if not customer delight. ERP enables many of the factors that we have mentioned above like minimizing errors, reducing costs, being innovative and more and these contribute to better customer experience. Furthermore, ERP can be leveraged to see how products and services are being used, and this can be used to tweak products to deliver better customer experiences.
9) Leveraging latest technology
The tie-up with the right ERP solution provider also exposes an organization to technology like 3D printing to custom fit parts, AI to study each aspect of their process, product or service, IoT to gather information on various parts of a product or service. This results in an incredible synergy between internal expertise and external sources of technology resulting in every technical aspect of the organization benefits. Cost of reworking is another aspect that benefits from leveraging the latest technology through ERP solutions. It will help you understand when it is the time change your high-tech manufacturing strategy.
Ready to find the right-fit ERP solutions to enjoy multiple human, business, and technical benefits to your business? Click here to start your digital journey today.
