Properly chosen an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software can help your company to organize, automate and improve your business; a customized ERP will do it better. But let us take this step by step.
For most of the organizations, ERP systems are understood as being the vital backbone of all their business transactions and communications, whether it will be between clients, partners, providers or employees. ERP systems nowadays represent much more than just a simple core of transaction processing for large, complex enterprises. Actually, they are often the ignition that is required for entrepreneurial initiatives such as e-business and B2B commerce.
That being said, we can agree on the basic definition that an ERP software is a computer system responsible for taking care of all the company’s day-to-day operations, ranging from Billing to Accounting, from Purchasing to Cash Flow, from Tax Calculation to Personnel Administration, from Inventory to accounts receivable, from the point of employees to control of the machinery of the factory. Said in another way, it takes care of all administrative and operational work done in a company. All the work!
But, this kind of functions may be all standard ones, no matter the software your company is using. So, when it comes to ERP systems, the word “customization” should be one of the most dreamed words a CEO /CFO can ear from a provider. In fact, we are talking about a solution that would, actually, facilitate your work and respond to your needs in a day-to-day routine, improving and optimizing the overall efficiency of the management of the company, reducing costs and risks, and, in return, making the company more competitive.
“Customized” is the word!
When it is properly chosen an ERP can help to organize, automate and improve business as an all, but when it comes to customizing an ERP software, the fact is that we are talking about increasing efficiency and maintaining of continuous growth. But pay attention for when a company chooses such kind of software randomly, it risks wasting money without boosting business.
To resolve all your problems and prevent this kind of situation, companies should definitely go for customization; a path to enhance ERP efficiency by bringing in functionalities like the ease of operations, exact mapping of the business processes, and also deploying better-integrated applications.
Although this is, for sure, the way to go, you must remember to adopt some best practices, before implementing a customized ERP:
- Analyse all the processes in the company and identify the ones that might not be answered by a regular ERP. Ask for customization only for those points and see how it goes, before an overall modification on the software.
- Don’t forget to consider the capacity of your existing IT resources; the solution you buy must “understand” your needs so you can rapidly work on the ROI (see also this).
- Engage with an expert ERP partner – like Blue Screen – who stands by you from day one and knows exactly the tools your business will be needing.
ERP: will it all be in the cloud?
Some specialists are defending that this kind of “new ERP software will be increasingly built on an innovative cloud architecture”. We are talking about something that is designed from scratch to handle the massive computational challenges of processing global enterprise data in real-time. If we look for those platforms, we will have to consider things like:
- microservices and open API’s;
- fast in-memory computing with the ability to process large volumes of data;
- a domain model with flexible and adaptable rules;
- a unified information architecture that eliminates the need for a separate data warehouse.
Above all, CEO and CFOs must be aware that, by choosing a customized ERP solution, they are also choosing simplicity, agility and a much higher adaptation to the specific needs of the customer’s business (that’s why it is called “customization”!).
Customized ERP solution: choosing simplicity, agility and a much higher adaptation to the specific needs of the customer’s business
And this kind of reality is not only valid for Portugal and the Portuguese market, but also for most countries in Europe, where challenges involving the business are very similar, although they “talk” an all different language. Markets like Spain, Denmark, Sweden or UK are going for customization as a “must do” and their companies are already taking advantages from it.
If you still have doubts, don’t hesitate to learn more about it here or contact Blue Screen. Our team of specialist will be more than happy to give you a hand and answer to all the questions you may still have.