It's Time for a Revolution in ERP Implementations

The 4th industrial revolution has been defined as interconnected physical systems that showcase the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data to automate manufacturing tasks and provide real-time data to make decisions. We have seen these ideas come to life with our clients using Azure Machine Learning for sales forecasting and drone based surveillance on construction sites in ways that can make a tremendous impact on the bottom line. The revolution is coming, but to support this next industrial revolution, your systems need to be interconnected. That's just not very prevalent in today's world - typically ERP systems serve as the data backbone of an enterprise and they just aren't getting implemented correctly or fully today.

At Stoneridge Software, we have set our 10 year target to revolutionize the ERP implementation. As I discuss in the linked article, implementing an ERP today is career-threatening move for a CFO or CIO and it doesn't have to be that way. We have developed a process-centric approach to implementing ERPs that bucks today's more common "write what you do here on a whiteboard" approach that leads to low success rates and minimal return on investment.

As we look to the 4th industrial revolution, we need connected systems and we can't have connected systems without an ERP that's fully implemented, built on an open architecture and cloud-accessible for best-of-breed applications. In the Industry 4.0 image above, you'll see a physical device connected to an ERP and a mobile device. That's all possible today but the revolution won't be realized until there's a revolution in how ERPs are implemented. That's our target and we're excited to be part of the revolution.