Most local businesses surveyed are confident enterprise resource planning (ERP) plays a crucial role in achieving business goals.
This was one of the key findings from the ITWeb/New Era Solutions 2015 ERP Survey, which ran online for 14 days in February.
A third of respondents noted their ERP solution plays a 50% to 75% role in achieving business goals, enhancing customer service and satisfaction.
Commenting on the results, Stuart Scanlon, sales and marketing director at New Era Solutions, says maximising productivity in every area of business is a necessity, and software solutions are an integral part of achieving this.
"Time management and focus have become critical in these tough times. Businesses that have access to the whole picture when dealing with clients are able to not only make more informed decisions quicker, but also have more productive interactions with their customers," he explains.
Scanlon believes once organisations understand the source, priority and business impact of challenges that originate from their ERP system, it becomes clearer to identify problems.
The survey revealed the top three main challenges organisations experience from their current ERP systems are too much reliance on vendors to make changes (44%), difficulties in getting visibility of current data (33%), and transactional or financial decisions cannot be done in real-time (32%).
"This is a concerning trend as it clearly shows a disjoint between data that management needs in order to make informed decisions and the data that they have access to or are being presented with. Historically, it was commonplace for IT to get a request from business to write a report and the report not actually detailing what management needed to know."
He explains this scenario is clearly still taking place and will become ungovernable as data volumes continue to grow rapidly. Scanlon points out that today's ERP systems and their modern technology foundation should alleviate such problems.
According to the survey, 37% of respondents realised the benefits of their ERP system within the first year, and 19% within 18 months.
Scanlon recommends that before software is installed, an organisation has to clearly articulate the goals of their ERP project.
"Such goals need to drive the business value for the ERP project. Do not over-complicate projects; rather focus on short-term goals of moving from disparate systems to one common system, that in itself will bring immediate value," Scanlon adds.
A quarter of respondents are unsure when last their organisation did a usability assessment; however, 26% said it was within the past 12 months.
"Usability assessments should be an ongoing exercise for any organisation and carried out at least once a year. As businesses grow, more customers, suppliers, products and services are added to the mix. The quicker this data can be captured and then presented to other system users in a meaningful format, the more obvious the benefits."
Some 32% of the respondents indicated they are interested in participating in a usability assessment, while 27% remained unsure.
"Participation in a usability assessment leads to a happier working environment, as people do not have to capture the same piece of information over and over, nor do they have to look for information that should be readily available at their fingertips," Scanlon says.
The results were evenly split when respondents were asked if their organisation had carried out a fraud vulnerability assessment on their ERP system, with 32% stating 'yes', 32% stating 'no' and 31% 'unsure'.
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