How ERP Has Evolved With Business Needs
The way people do business today has changed. Buzzwords like growth hacking and disruption are the order of the day and innovation underlines everything. Customer needs are changing, and this drives business response, making companies more agile and efficient. To grow and stay relevant, companies must expand, offer more, serve better and be open to experimenting with different models to get to what works for them. Growth now often comes through mergers and acquisitions as well as through an expansion of geographical footprint. Both circumstances bring with them considerable operational challenges.
How then does your IT infrastructure tie into this climate of explosive and urgent business growth? Let’s take a quick look at how enterprise resource planning systems have kept up with the market, or driven it, and supported business.
ERP systems were born from a need to create software that could meet changing requirements. They were designed as one generic system that could replace several company specific silos that could slow down data management and render it inaccurate at times. The first formal system was created in the 1980s and was targeted at large enterprises focussed primarily on finance.
As time went by and technology advanced, user specific needs came into play. Priorities for different companies were not the same, and with it came the need for customization, while somehow all being part of one larger solution. While a large section of companies, particularly those in the technology sector started to get excited by what was ‘new and improved’, other wanted to know ‘how they (could) improve their systems and keep up with new technology without starting the process from scratch’ each time (see Deloitte in ‘Reinventing the ERP Engine‘).
Enterprise system providers rose to the challenge. ERP was modernized, offering the required customization, even on out-of-box solutions more recently. Greater adoption meant costs went down, and pricing was much less of a barrier to entry. For the first time, ERP was no longer only the playground of the behemoths. Small and medium companies began to see options that were affordable, even in trying economical times.
Soon companies came to realize that for maximum effectiveness, ERP must be viewed less as an IT need and more as one for the business to ensure it is truly future proof. However, while plans earlier were being made for 5-10 years, now needs analysis must to be done annually to take into account advancements in technology and business intelligence models.
Next came the trend of cloud computing or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Because these systems deliver over the Internet, pro-rating costs to clients for only their usage, investments and set-up times are reduced considerably.
With more customers than ever before, ERP providers grew and with newer solutions out there, businesses pushed for even greater agility. Companies needed to facilitate collaboration and convenience. Mobile and social platforms became front and center, demanding to be supported. This brought with it massive amounts of data. CIOs started to see the need for integrating big data with their ERP systems for better analytics and insights. Analytics is no longer just reports and dashboards; they are now about valuable, actionable insights that help businesses gear up for challenges and offer a truly competitive advantage.
Today, more than ever before, organizations are in a position to get value from their data. ERP over the years has stayed focussed on innovation and utility, managing to stay current. A well-built ERP system brings separate business lines and their needs into a more cohesive whole. As long as that remains the goal, enterprise systems will continue to sustain growth and evolve alongside businesses.
If you have any questions about how our solution can assist you in the next phase of your growth, please get in touch at info@psierp.com.
