Five Benefits of Building a Business IT Strategy
February 8, 2024Enterprise resource planning – benefits for your business
Enterprise Resource Planning systems continue to offer incredible functionality that can integrate and automate business processes to drive down administrative costs whilst providing real time, data rich reporting and analysis tools to guide all of your business decision making.
What is Enterprise Resource Planning?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a software system that organisations use to manage core processes such as:
- Accounting
- Human resources
- Supply chain
- Procurement
- Manufacturing
The power of ERP is in how it integrates data flow between processes, increasing efficiency and reducing errors. An ERP suite will also include performance management modules for improved operational and financial information, facilitating better planning and budgeting.
Why replacing legacy ERP systems makes sense
Many organisations are still running separate software packages to support each individual business process – and while they may have been state-of-the-art at the time of deployment, they may now (or soon be) obsolete. These issues are compounded by the lack of integration between these systems, forcing businesses to use manual methods to move data from one process to another, which is inefficient and prone to error.
A quality ERP system will not only enhance and support your individual processes but will also resolve your inter-operability issues for optimised business performance.
The competitive benefits of well-managed ERP
An optimised ERP system will undoubtedly make you more efficient and productive but it can also provide a wealth of benefits to give you a competitive advantage:
- Improved agility allowing you to react quickly to new opportunities
- Optimised collaboration between teams to deliver high-quality tender responses
- All your business data is centralised and standardised in the same format making it easier to compile reports and analytics for timely business decision making
- Automating repetitive tasks can free up your employees to focus more of their time on value adding activities
- Access can be configured right down to field level in D365, giving enhanced data security compliance which is a key expectation for many customers
- Having all your customer data and their order history together in one place will improve the customer experience when dealing with any issues that may arise, keeping customers happy increases the likelihood of repeat business
- Cloud computing provides increased mobility for your employees, they can access the system from anywhere on any device
Evolving your enterprise resource planning environment
Deploying an ERP should not be a ‘set it and leave it’ activity. As your business develops and grows, you’ll need support to ensure your ERP system evolves as well. You might choose to build that capability in-house or you may decide to partner with us to continue to maximise the inherent benefits within your ERP system.
No business stands still, so while your initial ERP deployment will support your current operating model, in time, you’ll likely want to explore opportunities such as:
- Improving process automation with Power Automate
- Developing powerful Business Intelligence solutions with Power BI
- Deploying Copilot Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools to improve and augment process efficiency and productivity
- Integrating with supplier and customer systems using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or Extraction Transformation & Load (ETL) tools
- Deploying and integrating a webstore, CRM package or other third-party applications
Seeking help to take the leap
It’s clear that transitioning to ERP can be a future-proof way of enhancing and protecting your business, but you’ll probably want some help to get you there.
Our team of established, reputable experts are always on hand to offer advice and support. For a no-obligation chat to explore enterprise resource planning benefits for your business, why not drop us a line?