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For every Thanksgiving dinner, you need, at the very least, the basics. It wouldn’t really be Thanksgiving without stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie and, of course, the turkey. It’s more than welcome to add some extra foods to the feast, but the minimum you need at every Thanksgiving meal are the main components.
We are a partner of the software comparison portal Crozdesk.com who help you find the right solutions for your needs. Crozdesk’s Erp Software advisors can give you unbiased advice and help you narrow down software products that best fit your exact needs. Our partnership gives you free access to their tailored software selection advice and sometimes even discounts with the vendors, taking the hassle out of the research process. It takes just a minute to submit your requirements and they will give you a call at no cost or commitment. You’ll get custom product shortlists covering the top solutions that best fit your specific needs from their team of software experts (via phone or email) and they can even connect you to your choice of the selected vendors. To get started, please submit the form below: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is much the same. Your ERP system can be jam-packed with innovative and intuitive features, but if it doesn’t have one of the main components, it’s simply not worth it. So while you’re evaluating ERP vendors, make sure that they have each of the six main ERP components. And if they don’t, look elsewhere. What are those six main ERP components? Well, we’re glad you asked: 1. Human ResourcesManaging your employees should always be priority number one. Without them, you don’t have a company. Your HR ERP component should be able to handle the full spectrum of employee management, from onboarding to offboarding, and from benefits administration to timekeeping. The biggest feature you need from a HR component is payroll software. Manually submitting payroll and issuing direct deposits is incredibly time-consuming and, frankly, not worth your time. Instead, an HR component automates payments, including tax and benefits deductions. With an integrated timekeeping feature, even payments to your hourly workers can be automated, so you don’t need to manually input their timesheets. 2. Customer Relationship ManagementManaging your customers and leads needs to be your second highest priority, because without them, your business can’t survive, let alone grow. A customer relationship management (CRM) ERP component allows you to keep track of all of your customer and lead data within your ERP solution. The insights you can gain from a CRM help optimize your marketing and sales efforts. One of the main uses of a CRM is tracking the buyer histories of your customers. With this data in hand, you can suggest additional purchases through cross-selling or upselling, or try to sell them a relevant product/service when they’re otherwise not as likely to buy. In addition, you can use a CRM to track the conversation history with leads, so you know who’s talked to them, when they talked and what they talked about. Using this data, you can more effectively lead them down the sales funnel by providing them with relevant marketing materials, and making sure that sales reps never double-up by calling about the same thing. 3. Business IntelligenceBusiness intelligence (BI) is pretty new. At least, it is when it comes to standard ERP components. But considering how many businesses are attempting to create data-driven decision-making processes, it’s quickly become one of the standard ERP components. The BI component of your ERP software collects and analyzes data, providing you with actionable insights related to your business processes. The best BI ERP components deliver those insights in reports. A good reporting feature is the most important in a BI, so you can make sense of the data it analyzed. Some reports come in the form of numbers in different tables. But the best reports are visual, allowing you to spot trends at a glance. Make sure that data visualization is possible with the BI components’ reporting features. Otherwise, those insights will be a lot harder to decipher. 4. Supply Chain ManagementCreating an efficient supply chain isn’t exactly easy, even when deploying software to help you out. The supply chain management (SCM) component of an ERP system is one of the most crucial for this reason. You need the best SCM features to be able to optimize your supply chain, and that starts by collecting real-time data. Real-time data allows you to keep tabs on your supply chain, so you can find and fix issues as they happen, rather than waiting until you receive the data a day or more after the fact. It also makes predictive analytics possible. The SCM component, with the aid of real-time data, can help with demand planning, so you can create an up-to-the-minute accurate production plan that meets demand, but doesn’t exceed it. 5. Inventory Management SystemAn inventory management component is one of the most collaborative ERP components. Inventory management works in tandem with the SCM component, but also dips its toes in other processes, such as sales and warehousing. These main purpose of these components is to manage order fulfillment and stocking a warehouse. The best inventory management components come with tracking features that all but eliminate manual inventory control. These features include multi-level serial number tracking, revision level tracking and multiple units of measure per product ID or SKU. 6. Financial ManagementLast but not least, we come to the component that deals with data from all of the other ERP components. Since every business process involves money in one form or another, whether it’s paying your employees or paying to ship goods, the financial management component works with all of the other components in your ERP system. This component stores and analyzes all of your financial data, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, costs, budgets and forecasts. It helps reveal insights into your spending, so you can discover profit trends and times of unusually high spending. Then you can put that data to good use by changing whatever processes are causing lower profits or high spend, so you can maximize your profits while reducing costs. Do Your ResearchLong before you reach the ERP implementation stage, you need to research what components and features are available in an ERP system. Although you may need other ERP components, at the minimum, your system should have these six. And just as importantly, make sure that the components they offer have all of the features your business needs. Without doing the proper research, you’ll end up searching for a new ERP way sooner than you’d like.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software applications that manages day-to-day business processes and operations across finance, human resources, procurement, distribution, supply chain, and other functions. ERP systems are critical applications for most organizations because they integrate all the processes necessary to run their business into a single system that also facilitates resource planning. ERP systems typically operate on an integrated software platform using common data definitions operating on a single database. ERPs were originally designed for manufacturing companies but have since expanded to serve nearly every industry, each of which can have its own ERP peculiarities and offerings. For example, government ERP uses contract lifecycle management (CLM) rather than traditional purchasing and follows government accounting rules rather than GAAP. Benefits of ERPERP systems improve enterprise operations in a number of ways. By integrating financial information in a single system, ERP systems unify an organization’s financial reporting. They also integrate order management, making order taking, manufacturing, inventory, accounting, and distribution a much simpler, less error-prone process. Most ERPs also include customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track customer interactions, thereby providing deeper insights about customer behavior and needs. They can also standardize and automate manufacturing and supporting processes, and unify procurement across an organization’s business units. ERP systems can also provide a standardized HR platform for time reporting, expense tracking, training, and skills matching, and greatly enhance an organization’s ability to file the necessary compliance reporting across finance, HR, and the supply chain. Key features of ERP systemsThe scale, scope, and functionality of ERP systems vary widely, but most ERP systems offer the following characteristics:
Types of ERP solutionsERP systems are categorized in tiers based on the size and complexity of enterprises served:
ERP vendorsThe top ERP vendors today include:
Selecting an ERP solutionChoosing an ERP system is among the most challenging decisions IT leaders face. In addition to the above tier criteria, there is a wide range of features and capabilities to consider. With any industry, it is important to pick an ERP vendor with industry experience. Educating a vendor about the nuances of a new industry is very time consuming. To help you get a sense of the kinds of decisions that go into choosing an ERP system, check out “The best ERP systems: 10 enterprise resource planning tools compared,” with evaluations and user reviews of Acumatica Cloud ERP, Deltek ERP, Epicor ERP, Infor ERP, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, NetSuite ERP, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP, Oracle Peoplesoft Financial Management and SAP ERP Solutions. ERP implementationMost successful ERP implementations are led by an executive sponsor who sponsors the business case, gets approval to proceed, monitors progress, chairs the steering committee, removes roadblocks, and captures the benefits. The CIO works closely with the executive sponsor to ensure adequate attention is paid to integration with existing systems, data migration, and infrastructure upgrades. The CIO also advises the executive sponsor on challenges and helps the executive sponsor select a firm specializing in ERP implementations. The executive sponsor should also be advised by an organizational change management executive, as ERP implementations result in new business processes, roles, user interfaces, and job responsibilities. Reporting to the program’s executive team should be a business project manager and an IT project manager. If the enterprise has engaged an ERP integration firm, its project managers should be part of the core program management team. Most ERP practitioners structure their ERP implementation as follows:
Four factors are commonly underestimated during project planning:
Why ERP projects failERP projects fail for many of the same reasons that other projects fail, including ineffective executive sponsors, poorly defined program goals, weak project management, inadequate resources, and poor data cleanup. But there are several causes of failure that are closely tied to ERPs:
Cloud ERPOver the past few years, ERP vendors have created new systems designed specifically for the cloud, while longtime ERP vendors have created cloud versions of their software. Cloud ERP There are a number of reasons to move to cloud ERP, which falls into two major types:
For most enterprises, ERP as a service offers three advantages: The initial cost is lower, upgrades to new releases are easier, and reluctant executives cannot pressure the organization to write custom code for their organization. Still, migrating to a cloud ERP can be tricky and requires a somewhat different approach than implementing on on-premises solution. See “13 secrets of a successful cloud ERP migration.” |