ERP software application: do benefits outweigh challenges?

ERP software application stands for enterprise resource planning, which synchronizing a series of discrete enterprise software into a single tool for managing enterprise resources.

Since the rapid advancement of technology raises the complexity of resource management, ERP software has built from several parts, which requires close collaboration among all enterprise departments. The born of ERP system is claimed to basically alter the way a business generating and analyzing data collected from several performing sources. Despise disjointed reports containing mismatched data, businesses recently accommodate the integrated app development, showing an overview of how all the processes work simultaneously.

Obviously, data came from the enterprise resource planning system refers to be highly accurate, providing strong evidence for decision making, which lowers the risk of failure. However, the debate among industry experts is heating over whether the ERP system is worth the investment in the context of management control. In this article, we will discuss the core benefits and challenges when implementing ERP software in the enterprise business.

Enterprise resource planning system (ERP) and management control

In practice, an ERP system plays a crucial role, which providing tools to perform accounting and management control of an enterprise. In this case, it contributed to many aspects of management activities, instead of a pure accounting system. However, although ERP and management control cannot be separated as a distinct concept, they also contain some significant conflicts.

Overall, the management control system mainly focusses on providing the tools to monitor the accounting sector in the short-term, making sure the financial resource strictly follows the long-term goals. In other words, management controls access the resource consumption concerning the progress of goal achievement.

With technology advancement, the ERP system currently used to solve several urgent management issues, keeping the enterprises organized and effective performance. That’s why the existence of ERP software should be considered with the ability to deliver management control in the business.

Benefits of using ERP software application

The outstanding advantages of ERP are seemingly undeniable since the majority of enterprises globally leverage ERP systems as an efficient tool for reporting, promoting productivity, as well as a standardized business process.

Make reporting more accurate and reliable

The consistency of input data using in ERP systems refers to a crucial benefit, leading to this kind of system become more popular recently. As an integrated system, ERP could speed up the process of generating and gathering raw data. Then, you might find the report with the statement of profit and loss faster than using a separate system.

In modern ERP software, IT development companies have developed the ERP system being consistent with business intelligence technology. In which, you can see the summarization and drill-down indicated insight the reports. From the management context, enterprises’ decision-makers tend to rely on reports as trusted pieces of evidence to deliver business strategies. Additionally, managers can handily take care and assess the performance of the companies’ department with only one access.

Related article: 7 latest tech trends in 2020 will shape your business

Enhance productivity

As mention above ERP has more benefits in giving managers a centralized control capacity. By which, business owners timely detect the issues and optimizing the time consumption in each part of the process. By accessing the real-time data, users handily track the inventory, costs, and then optimize the enterprise resources. There are there fundamental scenarios that an enterprise can raise their productivity by using ERP software.

• As the combination of all other systems into one ERP software, the communication among employees, which make sure all department smoothly cooperate.  
• With data standardization, the enterprise can leverage automated processing to reduce the manual task, which increases accuracy and productivity.
• Using the same data source, staff save time for reporting.

Adjusting the enterprise process

Many business owners believe that ERP software can help fix and improve the quality of the enterprise process. As an integrated system, ERP illustrates a picture of how enterprise resources flow inside the company. Whereby, users can detect which stages that consumes the most amount of resources. Then company leaders could timely alter inefficient parts of the stage to optimize resources and costs.

Related article: ERP system for food industry: Opportunity and challenge

Challenging in using ERP software application

Besides the above advantages, the application of the ERP system also induces some difficulties, which damages the enterprises’ s performances.

Technical challenge

In practice, most ERP systems are developed as software as a service (SaaS) that the data is mainly stored on a server of a third party. To take any action, companies need to use tools provided by the providers, which can lead to data lead. In which, if your company try to take full control of the system, it will induce several technical challenges that you should have in-house engineers to handle it.

Apart from that, the rapid advancement of technology accelerates the outdate period of the ERP system and the weak skills of users. To overcome this challenge, you should consider some core criteria below:

• Considering maintaining the current system or buying the new one
• Considering the potential data volume generated by the ERP system
• Examining the location of the server and company to support data transparency.
• Consider the devices to control the ERP system and the internet connection
• Consider the frequent training staff to keep up with the technology innovation

Data collection challenge in ERP software application

With the enormous data came from the ERP software needing to be analyzed, your enterprises have to invest more in data skillset. At the ends, data is only the vehicle, not the purpose. It means enhancing reports’ quality tends to be the final result of the entire system. That’s why you should take the following idea into account for better data analytic.

• Preparing tools for import and export data
• Eliminate the quality issues after converting data.
• Integrating and leveraging historical data in report and forecasting
• Consider using the reporting services from big data analysis agency
• Ordering data controlling tools prior ERP software development company
• Consider multiple data storage methodology including cloud enterprise resource planning

Management challenge

In terms of management control, the high level of integration among the ERP system causes the difficulty in management activities due to the skills gaps among employees. In a common case, there is only a small portion of staff adopting the rapid change, while the remaining got struggling with implementing their duties. If those employees using the new system in the traditional ways might lead to replicate the same issues.

Communication and training refer to practical solutions to enterprise owners. Before identifying the groups of lower-level staff, you should set up the frequent support session with experiences developers, which helps them follow up on the change. On the other hand, companies should spend time to build comprehensive business progress. By which, the time and effort to train staff could be reduced. In turn, companies should respect the employees’ response that they could steadily change the rule for a better working environment.

Final words, from the context of business intelligence, the advantages of the ERP system are undeniable, which encourages enterprises to adapt to the rapid changes in the market. For sustainable growth, hiring a Vietnam software development company for ERP development is seemingly the growing trend. Besides the investment in technology, companies should spend more on human resources.