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ERP - Empowering Businesses to Succeed
One of the most important things to invest in while scaling up a business is an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP). An ERP system is a software consisting of a suite of applications to efficiently manage various business processes and thus run the business smoothly.
An ERP system consolidates the different business processes, enables the flow of data between them and provides complete visibility into the business processes – single source of truth.
It is designed in a way to centralize and optimize operations, while reducing manual work. For e.g., in a supply chain industry, an ERP system could automatically run a financial analysis and can predict future stock needs to keep inventory at a healthy level.
There are specific modules available for different industries, so companies can pick and choose as per their requirements.
ERP Implementation Life Cycle
To implement ERP in any organization, they must adhere to the implementation process under the life cycle.
- Selection of packages
- Project Planning
- Analysis GAP
- Re-engineering
- Training
- Testing
- Application
- Maintenance
Use Cases of ERP
Finance
An ERP system can automate, simplify and evaluate most of the accounting processes. An ERP solution can compute and analyze within minutes what might take days for a human to achieve. Such types of software can facilitate budgeting, payroll, banking operations and billing. The system conducts cost analysis to better manage cashflow and forecast future growth.
Human Resources
An ERP solution can also help with hiring, training new employees and tracking their productivity. Each employee can log into the system and enter the time they worked and manage benefits. The system can send out employee surveys and news. It provides an online community for employee collaboration and lists the policies and procedures for the company.
Inventory and Supply Chain Management
The system manages what is needed to flow seamlessly to the inventory management team. The inventory and materials management helps keep track of stocks, set appropriate price points and locate items within the warehouse. Supply Chain Management (SCM) eliminates the human error that can result in costly mistakes in the distribution system.
Manufacturing Management
ERP systems can enable organizations with production control, process synchronization and quality evaluation. The system can also analyze the financials of a manufacturing company and automatically adjust processes based on cost analysis and forecasting.
Benefits of ERP
Over the past decade, the ERP solutions has inarguably become one of the most reliable platforms to run business operations. By now, the businesses have generated an exceptional volume of data and this trend of constant expansion is accelerating each day.
Increases Organization-Wide Productivity
An ERP system can automate repetitive processes, reducing manual tasks to an absolute minimum. The system not only improves the productivity of the operations, but it also eliminates the possibility of inaccurate data entry. Further, the ERP system makes it easier for the organization to collect and access all data. The systems are designed in a way to keep the business on track, identify and solve flaws and make managing the business much easier than before.
Enables Informed Decision-Making
The ERP acts as a central hub for storing all real-time information across departments. It enables the business to make accurate forecasts and realistic estimates. It also helps generate deeper insights and get quick answers to mission-critical business questions.
Agile Business
When tedious tasks take up much of the employees’ time, that often leads to a delay in production, which affects the business and even the customer experience. ERPs are flexible enough to adapt to shifting market dynamics and changing needs.
Save Operational Cost
Once implemented, the ERP system helps in streamlining all our business process by reducing the overall running cost. The employees get the tools they need to make a proactive decision, that has the potential to increase the efficiency and reduce operational costs associated with manual information tracking, marketing, employee engagement, production, and other processes.
AI-Powered ERP System and its benefits
When an ERP system is paired with AI and ML, it can help predict the best course of action based on historical data. Such functions are vital for strategic business planning. Business leaders increasingly adopted AI to improve efficiency, productivity and ultimately overall business results. There are other countless benefits and use cases of AI-enabled ERP software for business process improvement, like,
Intelligent Data Processing
Even though ERP software offers a smart solution for improving the productivity and efficiency of the business processes, it lacks the capability of effortless processing of stored information at a supersonic speed as done by an AI-enabled system. An AI-integrated ERP software allows you to tap into real-time data from different departments and draw the right insights for accurate and efficient planning.
Automation
Manual entry of data can cause a tremendous amount of workload for employees and therefore cost many man hours. In addition to this, it can add up expenses due to data feeding errors related re-work.
Ensuring Greater Agility
With AI-enabled ERP implementation, the system become adept in tracking changing market conditions and response to those to minimize the risk and explore more opportunities. Routine tasks, which used to take up a significant portion of employees’ productive time, leading to inefficiency can now be automated.
Organizations must conduct an internal analysis to figure out whether adopting an ERP system/software is the right decision. Identifying broken processes is important for growth and finding areas of improvement. Spending a lot of time on day-to-day activities, having manual processes with multiple data sets, among other things are signs that a business needs an ERP system.
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