Connecting systems with Cloud ERP

Transformation Management

Tools for Innovation

As businesses continue to use technology to become more agile and dynamic, embracing cloud ERP is the foundation onto which post-pandemic enterprises are being built.

Over the last decade, the ability of businesses to collect and analyse data has grown exponentially.

And as new tools – most notably AI and machine learning became available – ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) could be expanded to offer analytical insights enterprises could use for innovation.

ERP Market

Re-evaluating businesses

It’s no surprise that the global ERP market is forecast to expand by over 13% to $40 billion by 2025. Coupled with this expansion is the shift from on-premises ERP to hosted services. CFOs are also building this shift into their revised costs as their enterprises emerge from the pandemic with dispersed workforces, new supply chains and a customer base that has changed their buying behaviour.

Embracing cloud ERP also delivers the flexibility that enterprises now need to thrive in a post-pandemic business landscape. For example, the pandemic revealed how potentially vulnerable supply chains could be with even a minor disruption. To mitigate this, businesses are re-evaluating how they connect with suppliers and using cloud ERP solutions to manage these relationships.

Looking at the quote from Michael Larner, Principal Analyst at ABI Research, I see business leaders actively re-organising their supply chains. How they manage these shifts requires a new approach to ERP:

To mitigate supply chain risks, manufacturers should not only not source components from a single supplier but also, as COVID-19 has highlighted, shouldn’t source from suppliers in a single location.
Michael Larner Principal analyst ABI Research

Connecting systems

ERP is about more than just evolving how your company manages its supply chains. Many of the businesses I speak to lament their ability to connect aspects of their business processes together. I have long advocated for integration and automation as pillars onto which thriving and innovative businesses can be built.

The advent of Industry 4.0. A raft of new technologies such as IoT, 5G, and Edge Computing all require oversight. Here, next-generation ERP systems are ideal. And connect these services to the flexibility that the cloud offers, your company then has a powerful tool that could revolutionise how your company’s systems work together.

No discussion of ERP is complete without covering the pandemic's impact. Businesses are being transformed into decentralised agile companies that need digital tools to help them navigate their new enterprises. The workplace has been reinvented, so ERP is evolving to deliver the latest tools needed to manage the new normal of business. Next-generation ERP can use the mass of data that is available to deliver insights and practical actions.

Also, scaling innovation requires new levels of control. As the business landscape has changed, how products and services now come to market has accelerated. Many businesses have moved to a ’cloud first’ stance as these services came online and expanded their capabilities.

Enhancing their ERP via composable IT is also a major change companies are moving through as their relationships with suppliers and customers evolve. For example, how the omnichannel will develop over the next few years will need advanced cloud-based ERP services to connect these services into a seamless whole customers' now demand.

Insights and actions

The power of cloud-based ERP is the overview it can give business leaders. So many of the conversations I have with businesses are about their lack of insight and inability to use the information they have to make tangible decisions about their enterprises. Cloud ERP systems have the capability to take large complex datasets and look at the granular needs of specific business processes. This is where insight becomes strategic and actionable innovation.

Trend to adopt cloud ERP over SaaS implementations

For example, the SAP Digital Boardroom can help businesses make decisions based on the available data. What's more, this data can be structured or unstructured and does not have to be an SAP data source. I see this level of flexible, secure integration, rapidly developing ERP tools and how they are deployed.

Cloud ERP is on the move

Also, legacy ERP was difficult to configure and personalise to the precise needs of the business using the service.

Today, the low-code movement shows how companies don't have to bend these systems to their requirement but can easily modify them to deliver real-world benefits to their users. And these users are not just at high-level management but can also be individual workers. This granular approach is a clear trend across post-pandemic business process management.

Cloud ERP services are also opening the possibilities that predictive analytics offers to enterprises. Every business is looking at how they can increase their resilience in the face of any future global event. When ERP is connected to machine learning AI’s this opens a wealth of opportunities to identify system and process weaknesses which can then be addressed.

And cloud ERP is on the move. As businesses shift to permanent remote mass working, an ERP solution that can support every user no matter their needs or location is a core business case for cloud ERP. Businesses will also make ERP their own by focusing on the precise needs of teams and individuals to ensure the ERP they use delivers the services they need when they need them.

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