What are the 5 Benefits of ERP Automation?
In this era of networked economy, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has a greater role to play. Its integration with the new-age technologies has brought ERP automation under the spotlight. In fact, many businesses are already leveraging it for various important efficiencies and business process improvements.
What exactly is ERP automation, and what are its top five benefits to manufacturing businesses? This newsletter discusses at length:
Overview
ERP software, once used exclusively by large enterprises, has evolved over the years to get to its present form, where it has adapted to the needs of businesses of different size and scope. While it started as a complex tool with heavy infrastructure and continuous manual support and maintenance requirements, it has gradually become an automated tool that hardly requires any manual intervention.
Today, they say, the best way to bring value to your organization is to leverage automation. And rightly so, more and more businesses across the world are moving away from their traditional ERP systems and turning their ERP software into an automation engine.
This includes implementing a new-age ERP solution, or integrating the existing ERP system with the latest technologies that drive automation. With ERP automation being the focus area of this newsletter, let’s first understand what ERP automation is, before diving deeper to understand its benefits to the manufacturing businesses.
What actually is ERP automation?
In simplest terms, ERP automation is all about eliminating or reducing manual intervention in performing different business tasks. Its benefits to the business include operational excellence, improved productivity and quality, reduced carbon footprint, as well as errors and wastes, and as a result, greater growth and profitability.
However, there are actually two school of thoughts when we talk about ERP automation.
While the process of implementing an ERP software , introducing an organization to it for the first time, and ridding it of manual way of doing business, in itself is a form of automation, and can be termed as ERP automation, there’s another school of thought as well.
A separate definition of ERP automation includes the integration and application of newer technologies and concepts, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) etc. to an ERP solution, so as to make its features and functions automated. ?
The first approach, which is about using the ERP software and its dedicated applications as tools to improve the traditional business processes by automating and simplifying them, thus making crucial savings on resources such as time, talent, and cost, is one we have spoken far too often about.
Let’s discuss the latter — automating the features and functions of ERP systems through integration with the latest technologies — in a bit more detail here.
ERP automation 2.0
An ERP software, in its previous avatar — let’s call it ERP 1.0 — relied on manual intervention and constant instructions as well as monitoring at every step. However, with the technological evolution, it has matured to become smart and independent.
How? Let’s see.
Through the application of AI, IoT, and even Machine Learning (ML), an ERP system has got additional features that can help it make decisions of its own. The addition of these new-age technologies has turned an ERP system into a smart tool that can store and segregate the data on its own.
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It can then make informed, strategic decisions, as well as accurate predictions, and keep a check on the performance of the machines, and achieve business goals such as cost as well as machine-downtime reduction, improved safety, etc.
Incorporation of these technologies to an ERP is the driver of ERP automation, which further facilitates a smooth and continuous handling of workflows, forecasting, and records-keeping, and strengthens different business functions while tightening the inter-departmental integration.
Five benefits of ERP automation
ERP automation comes with multiple benefits. We talked about some of them in brief, like how it brings down manual intervention to bare minimal, which in turn eliminates errors, and saves time, costs, other resources, and increases process efficiency, among other things.
Let’s take a look at top five benefits of ERP automation:
With ERP automation, your key resources are no longer required to perform the repetitive and routine tasks such as data aggregation and entry, updating inventory information, compiling reports, and monitoring sales, etc., manually. All these tasks are automated, which means your ‘freed-up’ resources can focus on more complex projects and make a bigger impact on your business.
ERP automation also facilitates greater interoperability, which means different independent systems can be connected to each other and exchange data seamlessly. Take example of a plant floor which is home to IIoT-enabled manufacturing. Here, data gathered from the sensors on different machines can give manufacturers insight on machine performance, and help them make informed decisions, among other things.
With penetrative application of technologies such as AI & robotics in supply chain, many manufacturing businesses are relying on bots to manage certain key processes. Take for instance, getting the credit checked by a bot using a third-party credit rating service. There can be many such examples that are a testimony to the ability of such bots to comb through enormous volumes of data for quick identification of issues in virtually no time, which in turn allows organizations to take timely suitable actions.
Another benefit of ERP automation is better business predictions. AI-enabled ERP systems can automate the entire data analysis process and come up with intelligent predictions under diverse market conditions. Needless to say, these predictions can be more than handy in making critical business decisions. Another area where AI can help is resource allocation and management, helping businesses with vital predictions on which resource can be better utilized in what section of the business.???
Integration of your ERP software with your other business applications also lends your business the much-needed scalability and flexibility. This means when your company grows, the system continuously adapts to meet your growing needs. ERP automation is useful in changing business dynamics as well, enabling you to handle requirements of your multiple business units, different currencies, different time zones, and any other requirement seamlessly and efficiently.
To sum up
On the whole, ERP automation drives significant improvement in efficiencies across the business operations. ?If you are considering investing in ERP automation, you would want to make sure you choose the ERP software that fits your organizational needs the best, and can seamlessly integrate with the technologies.
Here at BatchMaster, we can answer any of your queries on this subject, assess your business needs, and help you find the right solution that has the capabilities to enhance the level of automation in all your business operations. Write to us today for a no-obligation discussion, or to witness ERP automation in action.