Your ERP system must support your business by enabling you to respond rapidly and intuitively to any change in market conditions.
Unfortunately many companies, still to this day, find themselves working within a very restrictive system where minor changes are both incredibly costly to make or come with excessively long development times. Not forgetting too, the huge frustrations had when trying to get across a simple change request that gets lost in translation from end user to reseller to software developer and back again.
If you’re thinking about upgrading your software and require more agility to react quickly to changing circumstances then you should be looking at systems that address these issues.
Say for example you want to…
- Colour code your customers in a meaningful way specific to you or
- Prevent staff placing orders under certain circumstances or
- Ensure popular products are always in stock…
Your system must have the flexibility within it to quickly and cost-effectively adapt to these requirements.
This may require setting up detailed rules and commands specific to your company but could result in a new level of efficiency and productiveness within your business; giving you more time to focus on other areas of your business. If this level of change request scares you, it shouldn’t. Modern ERP systems are developed using the latest technologies and offer more agile and cost-effective ways to tailor your software to suit all your little nuances as often as you need them.
And today, some systems give you the autonomy and control to make continuous changes to your business rules, processes and tasks through tier in-built code-free customisation tools. This is the kind of agility and flexibility you need in your ERP system to handle today’s ever-changing market conditions.
It goes without saying that any system should enable you to replace manual processes with automatic ones thus reducing discrepancies and eliminating time consuming, unreliable paper-based procedures.
It is also possible today, to have a system where you can create rules to remind you of essential everyday tasks and inform you of critical information. You can set up triggered alerts to inform and remind you of many different tasks such as routine reminders to empty and secure cash drawers after busy periods or to notify the stock controller when a large order is placed on the system.
Today, even the need to search for information is removed; information should be automatically sent to you in a format you like
Systems that are up to speed with new technology should also ensure the flow of accurate information between departments. Timely on-screen information and workflows should be enabling your entire staff to quickly and efficiently respond on the fly to any incident that crops up.
In today’s business world this real-time, accurate information is critical. So too is configuring your system to display in a preferred format, providing the information critical to each end user and enabling them to quickly and easily interpret information and make instant business decisions.
In summary, your system should be able to adapt, scale and grow as your business requirements change. But more importantly the cost of doing this shouldn’t be as prohibitive as it has been in the past. Some systems now give you the ability to continuously improve your system through in-built drag-and-drop tools so that you can you can quickly adapt to changing circumstances without having to revert back to your vendor.
ERP systems are changing for the better and now is the time to ask yourself – Is my ERP system my agile business companion or am I missing out?
Worth A Read: ERP – A Total Business Management System
Related Article: Justifying the decision to replace your current ERP System
