When you think of Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP, the very first thing that comes to your mind is the huge investment that goes into developing it. Every organizer who plans to incorporate ERP into its business expects to get maximum benefit from it.
Let us begin with brief record of how ERP be at its birth stage:
- When it was developed ERP, systems were very expensive beyond the reach of common man, complex and difficult to manage.
- It was costly and implementing it required lengthy procedures. It was tailored with complexity and there were some loopholes with it for it was unable to tailor the system to the business.
- When it comes to installation, earlier ERP tended to be on premise, i.e. installed and run on your site servers and computers. The major portion of budget gets used during implementation phase thus making it unaffordable for many small and medium businesses from investing in ERP.
- Historically maintenance contacts were sky high and a company with complex on premise ERP has was shelling out maintenance charges to IT services providers to look after their servers and other hardware along with maintenance of ERP itself, whether you purchase ERP through vendor or partner.
- Earlier ERP were very rigid with less or no flexibility. ERP systems forced to implement every single component of the software whether it was useful for your business or not. The result was that you have no control in selection of the process for your business and it was the vendor who used to select entire set up for you. Such lack of flexibility resulted in restricted business growth and makes it difficult for business to respond to market demands quickly.
- Complexity was another name of ERP in its earlier days. The main problem was that one was not able to add functionality easily or integrate it with other systems very successfully. ERP of initial stage made customization of any kind difficult and time consuming and the process would take months of work and some serious spending. And if you after strong battle win up and make customization as per choice, you end up losing to software upgrades that become serious agony to manage.If you want to succeed using ERP in today’s connected world, legacy ERP’s are not the solution as inevitable manual processes that go with them are not cut out for today’s connected world.
Change and ERP of today
Today the market has transformed itself to digital and mobile arena and ERP solutions are meant to be more integrated, more agile and more accessible. And the new generation ERP – Cloud ERP is meeting the modern technical needs.
Cloud ERP features innovative and state of art technology architectures with easily accessible data. It is also easier to incorporate, simpler to manage (which was not with Legacy ERP) and provides good return on investment (ROI).
Functionality
Cloud ERP of today has the capacity to handle many complex processes like work flow tools by creating a range of useful apps and integrating all to extend the core functionality of the product. In other words, ERP of today is more feature rich and gives you the option to add functionality that was not possible with complex on premise ERP of.
Minimized Capital expenditure
As modern ERP is cloud based there is no need for the manufacturers to invest in their own servers and storage, or buy license upfront that might not be needed straight away. Instead here payment can be made coordinated with usage – monthly or annually on a subscription basis. This makes ERP affordable to smaller businesses and deployment is faster.
No Maintenance Costs
As there are no servers to maintain and the up grading of software is done automatically as part of package. So, no separate maintenance contracts as everything is included in the monthly/annual subscription fees. Also, there is no more of tiring time constrained upgrading to ponder upon.
Cloud ERP is customizable as it makes use of best web standards and visual tools to make customization easier. It has third party app or integration that will make the software do things as desired by you and in case there is no such app, creating it is not a problem at all.
It is flexible in the sense that you can choose the functionality you need. Whatever you want can be added as per the needs and there is no force on you to implement every component of the software.
ERP of today allows you to add new users as and when required. This enables you to do away with users that you do not need for some time.
Integrated ERP
Cloud ERP is integrated in the sense that it can be easily synchronized with other business systems like CRM and Ecommerce. ERP is no longer just an ERP as it is meant to integrate easily with all your key business processes and data.
You can easily coordinate all your finances and order management with your ecommerce, customer service, marketing etc. and render high level of service that customers expect to receive in today’s competitive world.
Mobile ERP
Smart phones have entered the market with jet speed and every business man wants to access the systems using mobile phones and it is expected that ERP should be able to operate across all platforms and devices to meet changing business requirements.
ERP accessed through mobile enables enable perfect visibility in the sense that they can work even on shop floor, or in factory or at client or supplier’s sites. Managers should be always on high alert to survive in this highly competitive arena. They are needed to be alerted to realistic situations regarding business performance, matters related to sales or customers.
With Cloud, you can access the performance of any point of business procedure from any place with your mobile. Forget about those days where you must wait until you get back to office for updating the system and say bye to days of VPN connections that provide slow and limited remote access to your data.
Cloud ERP is there anytime, anywhere with one internet connection and mobile friendly app means the data is available in any device you want in appropriate format. With Cloud, ERP has been within the reach of smaller companies, which for a dream for them earlier. This puts smaller organizations on equal footing as compared to the larger ones.
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