ERP Explained: The Basics
Graeme Freeman
Fractional CTO, Fractional CIO. Fractional CISO, Co-founder & Director of Strategic Partnerships - Freeman Clarke UK, Co-founder & President - Freeman Clarke US
Clients frequently ask for our help with their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects. We’re not surprised, because ERP projects can take mid-sized businesses to an entirely new level. But they’re also notoriously difficult. ERP projects can be ruinously expensive — it’s often said that 75% of them fail.
With this in mind, in the coming weeks we’ll be developing our ERP Knowledge Centre. It will provide a comprehensive introduction to ERP systems, how best to implement an ERP project, and how to avoid the common mistakes that lead to expensive and frustrating ERP failures.
But let’s start with the essentials.
What is ERP?
Consider all the core processes you need to run your company: finance, HR, manufacturing, supply chain, services, procurement, and others. The most basic function of ERP is to integrate all these processes into a single system. The result is that all these separate parts of your business have access to the same information in real-time.
But new ERP systems are anything but basic. They use the latest technologies, such as machine learning and AI to provide information, visibility, and efficiency across every aspect of a business. And the promised integration may not materialise if the system is not implemented correctly.
Initially these products were targeted at the manufacturing sector. But they have generalised their offers to cater to every kind of business in every sector.
What are the advantages?
There are too many advantages of a well-executed ERP system to list in one blog post! But we can say that the advantages break down into four main categories; Reporting, Risk Management and Compliance, Automation of Business Process, Customer Service.
To read the full article follow this link to our website: https://www.freemanclarke.co.uk/2019/04/23/erp-explained-the-basics/
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5 年Finally!!! An explanation of ERP in plain English. Yes!!!
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5 年Interesting. The full version on your website is well worth a read - I almost didn't as I half expected it to be the same brief overview. It's not very often I read something about ERP implementation and agree wholeheartedly with everything that's said... but that's how I feel reading your article. Let's hope it inspires a few businesses to at least investigate moving to ERP instead of their disparate systems!