The enterprise resource planning (ERP) sector remains one of the most buoyant in the IT industry and is the cornerstone of IT strategy within organisations.
So says Ebrahim Laher, MD of EOH SAP Services, who rebuffs the notion that ERP's demise is nigh and argues that significant changes are taking place in the ERP sphere, such as more customised approaches and cloud computing.
“The future holds great challenges for organisations wanting to make the most of their IT infrastructure, and ERP solutions are evolving to meet these challenges. Business process execution is now fundamentally run on ERP, thus the demise of ERP is exaggerated,” says Laher.
To clearly understand how companies integrate business processes across departments onto a single, enterprise-wide information system, ITWeb and EOH today unveiled the two-week-long ERP Survey.
Laher points out that most ERP implementations are not optimally utilised by businesses and the full functionality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of ERP systems are not understood by the businesses that implement them.
Describing the latest trends in ERP, Laher says there is a need for quicker return on investments and a larger focus on medium-sized and small businesses.
“More and more businesses are looking for ERP systems that address their needs and provide a faster turnaround on monies spent. Also, the increase in scope of ERP implementations at small- and medium-scale companies is driving ERP growth in emerging and established markets.”
According to Laher, the expected return on investment provides the cost justification and motivation for investing in ERP.
“There are quantifiable benefits as well as intangible benefits in the ERP investment decision. The quantifiable benefits have a bottom-line impact on profitability, asset turnover and a potential effect on stock value,” he explains.
Laher also believes emerging technologies are not necessarily a threat to ERP. He argues that the convergence of mobile and Internet technologies is providing huge avenues in which ERP can grow.
He adds that cloud computing and mobile solutions hold exiting new advantages to enable vast volumes of data to be stored and accessed cost-effectively on any device at any time.
Laher says organisations are struggling to make sense of the vast volumes of information extracted from the ERP system.
“Most users of ERP systems never work out how to make optimal use of the information that resides in the system. Management, on the other hand, is demanding real-time access to decision-making information.
“A huge gap exists in harnessing the valuable information that ERP systems store and using this in insightful ways to enable managers to run the organisation,” he explains.
To meet these challenges, he says ERP systems have dashboarding and reporting add-ons that can be seamlessly integrated with the main system to provide real-time access to decision-making information.
“This can provide crucial advantages in environments where executives need information at a moment's notice.”
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