The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system promises to a seamless integration of their information, including customer orders, production, purchasing,inventory, distribution, human resources, and receipt of payments. ERP strategy not only defines the rules, components and road map governing the ERP deployment and utilization, but it also encourages and supports new product development and introductions. Hence, it’s essential that the ERP be selected and implemented throughout the development and execution of the ERP strategy. The most important factor is that ERP strategy must support the business strategy and accommodate changing business needs and technology. The business goals are mostly influenced by the effective implementation of information technology and align their IT goals and objectives.
Since business strategy affects ERP implementation largely, it is essential to be implemented and followed for organizational success. The major business strategy factors affecting ERP implementation are:
Business strategy and organizational capabilities:
ERP is influential in an organization’s maintenance costs, time utilization and increased efficiencies, and helps in gaining a competitive advantage by creating organizational-specific competencies making it a challenge for the competitors to imitate. Additionally, business intelligence, analytics, dashboards etc. delivers huge benefits to organizations enabling organizations to knowledgeably and purposefully plan and operate.
Directing data strategy:
Implementing business intelligence data strategy and migration, organizations are enabled with new capabilities and challenges to cater for. With ERP in place, the decision making is simpler as the entire company data is available at just a click, and in one single screen. Since ERP system has access to the real-time data, data redundancy and duplications are avoided too, enabling decision making an easier challenge to tackle.
Integrating with other members:
ERP brings along the integration savings with its inherent native interfaces, instead of commonly available interfaces for the legacy systems. Most ERP vendors offer integration of ERP with your business processes to enable effective functioning of all the members integrated with each other. Each system has a function to work on, and ERP brings out the best of all to elegantly and efficiently accommodate your company’s growth and keeping you in the competitive edge.
Improving collaboration and workflows
Collaboration enables simplifying a lot of business processes, effecting the company’s growth and its capability of being at par when compared to its competitors. ERP simplifies the process of collaboration easier by providing access to the data for the employees, where information from each department is funneled into one centralized location. The net effect on your business is increased efficiency and reduced operational costs associated with manual data tracking as well as higher employee engagement.
Driving organizational transformation:
The principle objective of enterprise resource planning is to integrate all the business functions into a unified platform for bringing in greater efficiency within a business model. Also, when all staff from different departments work with the same program, this application requires them to be more standard to define best practices within the workforce. Also, it helps in improving performance metrics and measurements in business process and aids in setting up future goals. When the systems get complex because of exponential business growth, enterprise resource planning brings in a degree of automation to the business, enabling generation of synchronized reports on key business metrics.
It is a known fact that ERP implementation is a complex process, but when properly managed, it ensures efficiency, targets and strengthens weak areas ultimately giving you means of building a stronger business. The potential for totally streamlined business functions and boosts in productivity over the long-term makes finding the right ERP suite a worthwhile investment of time and resources.
