Today's digital and mobile world demands core business and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that are leaner, more focused, more integrated and more agile. The cloud is meeting these needs by making ERP easier to deploy, more accessible, simpler to manage and more cost-effective.
So says Keith Fenner, senior VP for sales at Sage ERP X3 in Australia, Asia, Middle East and Africa, who notes cloud has also helped lower the barriers to entry for ERP.
According to Fenner, with a cloud-based solution, companies no longer need to invest in their own servers and storage, or buy licences upfront - they can pay for what they use per month instead. As a result, he says, even smaller businesses can now afford an integrated ERP solution.
"It's also worth remembering that staying with manual processes or legacy systems can be very expensive. Many companies are constrained from growing due to old systems not giving them the flexibility they need to compete in today's connected world - and the costs of maintaining these old systems can be high," says Fenner.
He also points out prices of ERP solutions have been falling over the years, as the software has become simpler and easier to deploy. There are many products on the market to address the needs of companies of all sizes and budgets - from the small enterprise to the largest listed companies.
Today's solutions allow users to add functionality as they need it, either on-premises or a connected service, rather than forcing them to implement every component of the software, he says, adding they are also configurable so the enterprise can adapt it to its needs without the need for extensive customisation.
"Thanks to these improvements in flexibility, pre-defined best practice business processes and ease of deployment, companies no longer need to spend as much as they used to on consultants to implement the software and re-engineer the business processes. Given that implementation costs soaked up most ERP budget in the past, this alone has made ERP far more affordable."
Describing ERP maturity in SA, Fenner says on the whole, the country has a mature market where most large and mid-sized companies have a strong ERP backbone in place. He believes the next phase in the market's evolution is seeing companies shift away from legacy ERP systems to ones featuring modern technology architectures with easily accessible data, and which drive growth.
He notes few mid-sized and larger businesses can compete effectively without an integrated ERP solution in place.
"ERP allows companies to automate business processes so they can save themselves hours of manual work they would otherwise spend recording transactions, doing calculations, preparing invoices, tracking and optimising inventory, and much more."
It also ensures companies have accurate records about everything that happens in the business and that they have disciplined business processes in place - essential for compliance with today's regulatory environment, he reveals.
ERP also puts real-time information at the executive team's fingertips so it can manage risks and make informed strategic decisions based on what is really happening in the business in order to enable growth, Fenner concludes.
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