Top 10 Benefits of ERP Software

The tremendous technological advances in recent years have completely changed the way the world does business. There’s no denying the fact that much of the world’s commerce today relies extremely heavily on technology and the Internet.

Nowhere is that made more clear than when one considers the impact of ERP on the business world. ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, is generally one of a business’s most significant software costs. But the ROI from the benefits of ERP is well worth the cost.

What is ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning is a multifaceted system to take care of a majority of your business operations and functions. It’s all about figuring out how you can maximize the use of your limited resources. 

The software houses multiple different functions that each cater to a different business function, depending on which ERP platform you end up using. In this article, we’ll go over a few of the benefits of ERP that your business will experience should you use one of these software systems.

1. Consolidate IT

One of the big things that ERP can do for your business is consolidation. This is especially true for your company’s IT department. Your business will be able to consolidate many of the functions of your IT department behind one pane of glass.

This does two things: it will reduce the amount of staff you need. Secondly, it will also keep internal operations running smoother, as any IT issues that come up with can be dealt with quickly and efficiently from the single operating system.

2. Visibility into Each Business Process

Because an ERP system houses so many different business processes, it affords tremendous visibility into each of those processes from a high level. That means that your executives no longer need to jump about in different systems in order for them to get a handle of what’s going in your business.

Instead, they can just log into one system that can tell them everything they need to know about the sector that they’re concerned with. 

3. Data-Driven Insight

Pretty much every ERP system comes with advanced reporting and analytics. You’ll be able to build out custom dashboards that highlight the data that your executive team finds most important to making decisions.

This allows your business to make data-driven decisions. Instead of relying on hunches or intuition, you can start allowing the analytics and metrics that your ERP provides to drive your decision-making. ERP analytics are so complex that training is often necessary: discover more about Epicor training.

4. Bring Departments Together

ERP allows synergies that bring departments together. One example of this is with your marketing and sales department. An ERP system can incorporate a CRM tool that houses all of your customer and contact data.

Now, your marketing team and sales team work out of the same system. Thus, they can improve workflows that handoff prospects from marketing into defined sales processes. The result is that your customers go through the buying journey faster (i.e. more productive sales and marketing).

5. Scalability

Every ERP system worth its salt is able to scale with your business. It will incorporate functions that allow you to scale with ease. Take, for instance, human resources. Managing your human resources department is by far one of the biggest issues that you run into as you seek to scale your business up and hire more employees.

An ERP system will offer recruiting tools that will make the lives of your HR people that much easier, allowing them to be more productive and scale your business.

6. Better Customer Service

Another important business function that can be housed in ERP is customer service. Customer service is the lifeblood of any brand that’s at the top of its industry. Serve your customers better than your competition, and your competitions’ customers will soon be flocking to you. 

7. Accurate Forecasting

Once you have the reports and dashboards built out that we discussed earlier, you’ll be able to better forecast your financial projections. This means you can deliver more accurate reports to investors and executives alike.

8. Work From Home Solutions

One of ERP’s principal benefits is that it can travel with you. Many ERP systems available on the market today come with mobile solutions that can go home with your employees. In addition, they can be run on laptops that your employees can take home with them, eliminating the need for in-person work. 

Consider that the ability to work from home is now one principal benefit that attracts employees to companies. If you offer work from solutions, there’s a solid chance that you’ll find it easier to recruit top talent to work for you.

9. Reduce Administrative Burdens

As you may have already guessed, an ERP system will significantly reduce the overall administrative burden. This is because the software will be able to do a lot of that administration for you already as it consolidates data from different departments. 

The net result is that your business spends less money on administrative employees and also doesn’t have to pay out of pocket for other tools that may be required to manage each of the individual functions that ERP encompasses.

10. Security and Compliance

Any company that’s ever been on the wrong side of a security or compliance audit knows that’s the furthest thing from a fun time you could think of. Because ERP systems deal with so much data, they are very heavily regulated and subject to stringent security and compliance requirements.

Thus, you can rest easy knowing that should you be audited, your ERP will help you back up your adherence to all required compliance criteria.

Know the Benefits of ERP Systems

There you have it — now you should have a very complete understanding of the many benefits of ERP systems. If your business could use any of the advantages listed above, then it’s time that you started shopping around to pick the right ERP system for your company. Let us know which one you choose in the comments below!

For more business advice, be sure to take some time to check out the rest of the articles available to read on the website!