How can organizations leverage ERP to achieve operational excellence?

Achieving operational excellence is the objective of every organization to ultimately achieve strategic goals. Several factors play a vital role to achieve this and one of the major tools in this regard is Enterprise resource planning (ERP).

With the ever-increasing competition in the corporate world, smart and unified management of information is a dire need of organizations to survive in the industry and operate efficiently.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is used by organizations to centrally manage their day-to-day operations. ERP synchronizes the cross-departmental information (Finance, marketing, human resources, IT, inventory, sales, services, procurement, etc.) and provides a smart way to handle the information flow.

ERP helps organizations to achieve operational excellence in the following ways

1. Eliminates gaps of outdated systems:

?ERP eliminates the loopholes of outdated systems in an organization and provides real-time monitoring capabilities for live tracking and information management.

It not only replaces the outdated systems but also helps organizations to get rid of the issues associated with them. ERP system comes with compatible features that integrate well with the modern requirements and overcomes the deficiencies of legacy systems.

2. Enhanced performance and improved productivity:

When organizations automate manual processes, the overall performance, and productivity increase.

It saves hours of manual efforts put in by employees to generate reports, timesheet tracking, inventory management, and other time taking tasks and eliminates the risk of human error. The ERP software database eliminates repeated tasks such as data entry and allows the system to perform advanced calculations within minutes. This frees up your team members’ valuable time to do more thoughtful work, increasing your return on investment (ROI) when it comes to labor. From this, ERP increases an organization’s productivity, efficiency, and profitability.

3. Collaboration:

Effective communication plays a key role in the success of any team or organization. The lower the communication barriers, the better the performance will be.

ERP system drastically improves the collaboration internally (cross-departmental) and bridges the gap between stakeholders.

This handy tool keeps all the stakeholders engaged to avoid any confusion. Be its customers, suppliers, retailers, or employees all are on the same page.

4. Better decision making:                        

Error-free and accurate data reflecting the actual picture enables organizations to make better strategic decisions for increased profitability and organizational growth. Though decision making is a complex process and requires a detailed analysis of facts and figures with a smart system like ERP, organizations get instant access to the critical facts, figures, historical reports, and changing trends to take smart and strategically correct decisions.

5. Cut down in further expenses:

Although ERP system does take initial investment for deployment but if properly placed it provides an excellent return on investment (ROI).

In today’s world, it’s extremely important to train employees on the applications or software being used in the organization. Companies running a large number of applications or software for their respective departments incur costs and put in a lot of effort to train their workforce on the tool.

With an ERP system in place, employees don’t have to be trained on various systems so it cuts down a major cost for the organizations. Instead of arranging costly training sessions for employees on multiple applications they just have to be trained on a single software that serves as a one-stop-shop for them.

6. Improved analytics:

Business analytics helps organizations to analyze their current standing in the market and where they want to go as a business to provide maximum return to shareholders. Therefore, having accurate and verified information is essential in this regard.

Unified/centralized data management enables employees to generate required content in a fraction of minutes and with its simplified format, they can better analyze the data and take decisions in the larger interest of the organization.

7. Getting rid of redundant data:

One of the major issues with non-centralized data is the repeated occurrence of redundant data. Redundant data is simply a data that is repeated twice, it normally occurs with the organizations having multiple data storage locations. Redundant data not only wastes the valuable time of employees but also creates confusion across the organization resulting in chaos-like situations.

Having an ERP system in place, companies can avoid confusion and inconsistencies caused by redundant data and henceforth increase their operational efficiency.

8. Transparency:

Data security and transparency are essential for businesses to operate. ERP systems ensure transparency across the organization by providing access/rights to the concerned personnel (Right people for the right data). Any modification to the data can only be done by the authorized people.

This role-based functionality of ERP makes it transparent and at the same time secure for the organizations.

9. Customization:

One of the biggest advantages of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software today is its modular makeup. Most ERP software provides organizations with the ability to customize the software according to their business requirements, unlike a fixed programmed functionality.

With the customized setup, organizations can actually achieve their desired results from the tool and drive it according to their business needs.

10 Customer relationship:

Customers decide the future of any business, so keeping and growing customer relationship is essential for any organization. With all the client data integrated into a single database, organizations can reach out to their customers for the post-purchase service phase to increase customer satisfaction and ensure customer retention.

Furthermore, a unified database also enables sales teams to approach customers with the latest business offerings and do the target marketing.

The latest ERP software also offers eCommerce integration which means organizations can now handle web-based orders and customer interactions.

11. Scalability:

ERP software enables organizations to add features and new functions to the existing software. With the business growth, ERP software helps organizations in terms of scalability.

12. Mobility:

Some ERP software provides users with remote access to the unified database which means users can work from home, office or any other remote location of their choice.