ERPs have been ever evolving into a more versatile and multi-faceted tool that organizations have widely embraced to unlock greater efficiency and productivity. According to Allied Research, the ERP market is expected to reach $86 billion by 2027. Everything present or future-proof, even in the context of technology, has a past. Let’s see how ERP, one of the most utilized consolidated systems, gained prominence in the business world.
The first precursor to ERP software traces back to the 1960s. It managed inventory and quality control in big manufacturing companies. But, the last two decades have significantly defined the journey and impacted the permutations of ERP software in consideration of the changing business needs, evolving business operations, development of computer hardware, need for automation, and adoption of the cloud. These factors have led to dynamic changes in ERP systems, transforming them into a technology that can be customized across industries and verticals of operations.
The 21st century has turned ERP into a product that is not a luxury that only large organizations can afford but a cost-effective and efficient solution for businesses irrespective of their sizes.
In the early 2000s, ERP evolved a lot in its software development department, wherein it integrated with third-party tools and was used by companies from one platform. With the advent of digitization (use of mobile phones, the evolution of cloud, dispersion of workforce), ERPs of the 2020s have witnessed a remarkable shift to being Software as a Service (SaaS) and an all-in-one Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) tool.
What are the characteristics of modern ERP systems?
Today’s Enterprise Management Systems implement essential business functions across all departments, automate the workflows, provide data analysis, manage inventory, production, distribution, and more. Modern ERPs are not limited to heavy manufacturing industries. They are integrated into healthcare, hospitality, finance, and professional consulting services companies
The key characteristics that make ERPs pivotal to business operations are:
1.Personalization
Cloud-based ERPs offer a great extent of personalization and configuration within the enterprise application.
2.ERP Integration with Multiple Departments
The primary characteristic of a modern ERP system is that it can be seamlessly integrated with the people and processes of various department modules, with each responsible for a particular function. For example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Sales, Finance, Human Resources (HR), and Supply Chain Management to gain a centralized view of each department’s essential operations, business data, and real-time data sharing across an organization.
3.Data Analysis
Using data effectively is the topmost priority for business leaders. Data analysis helps to turn information into actionable insights.
4.Automation
When you place an order, the inventory tracking module in ERP can automatically trigger shipment and generate invoices. Modern ERP systems can automate repeated tasks like payroll processing, executive information, alerting organization-wide notifications, decision support systems, and more. This reduces manual errors and efforts, offering more time to value-added business operations.
5.Tracking & Reporting
ERPs can track ongoing business operations and use data to create reports and insights, thus, developing business intelligence.
6.Security
A multilayer approach to data security and data isolation across ERP cloud systems enables faster data access and processing.
Why do mid-sized businesses need ERP systems, and how does SAP Cloud ERP impact business outcomes?
SMEs now realize the value of modern ERP automation compared to traditional paper-based systems or spreadsheets. ERPs offer digital scheduling and analysis to help businesses make better decisions and improve productivity.
Mid-size businesses require greater customization and services across their enterprise needs. However, many lack the IT infrastructure or resources to deploy robust solutions compared to big enterprises. With digital transformation being imperative in today’s age, they must solidify a cloud-based IT strategy or risk falling behind.
Under this new reality, mid-size companies must look for partners that can resolve business complexities and streamline business operations with an efficient ERP tool that is both cost-effective and resilient. An SAP Cloud ERP can give a mid-size business the competitive edge it needs to create a sustainable future for itself.
What are the challenges of implementing Cloud ERP?
Adopting an SAP Cloud ERP could be a detailed process involving managers from all departments, such as finance, operations, IT, sales, marketing, and human resources.The migration process could become complex and time-consuming in companies with diverse historical data.
1.Navigating change management
Despite the benefits of cloud ERP, it comes with a force of change that needs to replace integral systems. Suppose your teams do not comprehend the importance of implementing new cloud ERP systems. In that case, this could be a challenge navigating through the transformation journey, mainly because the process involves training teams to adopt the new system properly.
2.Learning new systems
Without thoroughly training about cloud ERP, businesses invest in the wrong places, are unaware of the features available, miss out on automating business processes entirely, and cannot speed up functionality or achieve sufficient productivity.
3.Identifying which functions need to be integrated
SAP Cloud ERP can be a cost-effective solution if businesses are well-managed to identify the crucial operations that require ERP integration. Otherwise, it gets complicated to manage a multitude of systems and data integration across modules.
4.Designing a flexible architecture
It takes a large amount of time and resources for businesses to reorganize the processes if the SAP cloud infrastructure is not built flexibly. Design complexity also increases maintenance costs.
What are the business benefits of SAP Cloud ERP?
Many mid-size companies benefit significantly from SAP Cloud ERP solutions owing to its low-cost ownership, increased agility and flexibility, data security, and reduced IT dependency and cost.
1.Intelligent Business Decisions
An ERP system that integrates and connects across all enterprise applications directly affects the business’s people, process, governance, and strategy. Modern SAP ERP enhances user experience through modern design, desired outcomes through data analysis and reports, and proactive project monitoring and management, leading to lower schedule risk and delivery cost.
2.Cost Reduction
One of the critical factors why SMEs adopt the cloud is to reduce IT spending. Using SAP Cloud ERP has several economic benefits, such as its availability on a subscription basis, reduction of hardware implementation costs, and proper distribution of resources when required. All of these are ideal for promoting business growth.
3.Scalable Production
With automation doing most of the heavy-lifting tasks in workflow management, employees can focus their time and work on business-specific operations instead of IT-related tasks. An SAP Cloud ERP suite that can be implemented on an incremental basis and scaled in and out as required offers faster deployment and saves downtime compared to on-premises counterparts.
How can the right IT partner empower your cloud journey and enable business growth?
While planning a modern ERP strategy, companies must pull together a deployment team that includes both implementation and cloud provider partners. We at Techwave are a team of technology disruptors who have digitized IT transformations for mid-market businesses using cutting-edge technologies to help customers respond to evolving business needs and drive real value for your enterprise.
Techwave’s CloudXoom Program empowers organizations of all sizes to migrate their SAP workloads, including S/4 HANA, SAP ECC 6.0, SAP BW, and others, to Cloud, resulting in cost savings of up to 30-33%.
The CloudXoom Program combines the power of the Cloud with enhanced automation of Techwave’s Autonetics Platform (TAP) and DevOps teams, helping clients rapidly move their SAP workloads to Cloud and easily manage them.
Our wide range of cloud solutions offers many native services to give you full advantage of enterprise-class technologies like Big Data and Analytics, DevOps, IoT, and Machine Learning. Access these services to help customers innovate and drive new value for their SAP workloads.
Techwave has partnered with pioneers in the public cloud space. We are a leader in AWS cloud consulting and highly customized SLA-driven cloud-managed services. We facilitate strategic cloud and business benefits that reduce costs and promote flexibility to support customization while ensuring the solutions are easy to implement, secure, and reliable, thus, maximizing productivity. Our AWS cloud services span – consultation, migration (including DB migration), DevOps automation, and managed and hybrid services under the expertise of highly experienced consultants.
With our expert SAP ERP implementation, you can dramatically reduce costs associated with ownership, strengthen security and meet compliance standards. Our cloud partner ecosystem (AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Google, and more) support high-performance computations with automated resource provisioning, single-pane-of-glass visibility, and optimal application availability. Learn how Techwave can take your organization to the next level.