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Home | Post-COVID ERP Strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly every element of life, from the way we shop, to the way we consume media, to the way we do business.

The needs of companies have shifted seemingly overnight, and their reliance on technology to provide business insights and facilitate basic communication has exploded. In the pre-COVID world, companies were slowly becoming more digitized and recognizing the need for advanced enterprise resource planning. Post-COVID, this technology has gone from a want to a need – company’s remote work environments and increased reliance on e-commerce has made the flexibility and speed that ERP systems facilitate an absolute necessity.

As companies investigate upgrading their ERP systems, it’s important for them to look at their most urgent challenges and be trained and prepared for their ERP transition. As ERP systems have evolved and become more customizable, their deployment speeds have slowed, and it’s become more difficult to extract business data and new acquisitions. But switching ERP systems takes time and resources, so the aforementioned challenges have largely been glossed over as companies have avoided investing the resources required to make a change.

Recent changes in business practices means that it’s more important than ever to make this shift, and to make it quickly in order to maximize effectiveness in managing supply chains, digitize finance and human resources functions and respond to consumer trends.

New ERP platforms can help companies address these areas by providing transparency into their sales performance, inventory status, production glitches and financial accountability. But most importantly, in an era where businesses are struggling to adapt, new ERP systems can provide decision-makers with instant business analysis driven by real-time data and better engage online employees and customers.

Talk to an expert for guidance on choosing the ERP solution that will help drive your business forward. Reach out today for a consultation.

Home | ERP and the New Wave of Accountants

Accountants and other financial services professionals have slowly integrated new technologies that increase accuracy and efficiency into their daily processes. In March of 2020 this steady integration was catapulted decades ahead as the traditional office-style workplace was instantly cast aside and accountants, along with their clients, shifted to a remote work environment.

For accounting firms that had lagged behind technologically, this meant an immediate shift in priority towards investing in new tech solutions and cloud-based data storage, and firms that had kept up-to-date on innovative trends had a tremendous advantage as their seamless transition allowed them to remain focus on providing clients with strategic financial advice.

Accountants that were already comfortable using cloud-based technologies were ready and waiting to maximize their value by providing timely, accurate strategic business advice to their clients, and the level of access their clients were able to provide to their external partners was largely dependent on their use and knowledge of cloud-based ERP technology. The advantages seen by more technologically advanced accounting firms have also been enjoyed by their more technologically advanced clients.

The need for technologies that include machine learning, predictive analytics and enterprise resource planning became the norm almost overnight, as suddenly accountants were able to access these systems remotely to provide clients with full financial analysis in the time it used to take to do a small review of data that the client had on-hand. This allowed financial advisors to provide more timely advice with greater accuracy as the company’s historical data, its current performance and projected outputs were now at their fingertips, regardless of their location.

The integration of advanced, cloud-based enterprise resource planning software is one more tool that your financial advisor can use to understand the complete picture of what is going on behind the scenes at your business, helping them to provide more detailed and thoughtful advice based on real-time data.

Integrating cloud-based ERP solutions helps your accounting team help you by giving instant access to estimated capital requirements and cash management, budgetary shifts, allocation of supply costs and the management of payments, all of which are needed to plan for the future of your business in a time where everything is constantly shifting.

Not only do these systems increase the access of data, but they automate your systems, giving you the flexibility to focus on your core business and the agility to pivot when market conditions change. As government regulations adapt to the changing global situation, proper ERP implementation can help ensure that your accounting data remains in-line with industry standards and reduces the margin of error in calculations or predictions.

If you want to speak with an ERP-accounting expert, we’re got you covered. Click here to learn more.

Home | How to Avoid These Common ERP Mistakes

The right enterprise resource planning solution can be the difference between your company acting proactively or reactively in a crisis. When internal IT professionals control the selection, purchasing, implementation and maintenance of a company’s ERP systems, a few common mistakes are made.

Here they are, and here’s how to avoid them:

Embracing the Status Quo
Deciding which ERP system is right for your business is a great opportunity to re-evaluate how your current systems and processes are working and redesign your business processes to be more efficient and effective. Often, company executives will select ERP solutions that simply automate their current processes without evaluating whether those processes are actually working.

Deciding in a Vacuum
The selection and implementation of your ERP solution should include insight from every stakeholder in your business, especially the end-users – the people actually using the new system on a day-to-day basis. Including team members from finance, manufacturing, operations, distribution, and every department within your company not only brings important business nuances that you otherwise may not have considered into the conversation, but it develops buy-in across your organization.

Underestimating the Expense
Purchasing, implementing and maintaining an ERP software solution is expensive and requires IT professionals. This team is critical, not only to get the project running, but to fix any implementation errors and keep the system running smoothly over time. Budgeting for this in advance will make the process easier down the road.

Choosing a Generic Solution
There are many ERP solutions developed specifically for a range of industries, and chances are, yours is one of them. When selecting your ERP solution, work with someone who knows the ins and outs of ERP that can help you select the one that has the features required by leaders in your specific industry.

Losing Your Patience
Implementing an ERP system takes time, and it rarely happens all at once. Companies often take a waterfall approach to ERP implementation – this includes implementing the system and training users simultaneously, going live immediately and expecting everything to work perfectly right from the start. Companies that take an agile approach are usually more successful with their ERP launches, implementing and training in stages that involve the users and addressing problems as they get closer to launch.

There are many approaches to take in the selection and implementation of your ERP software solution. We are here to help guide you through the process and ensure that your company avoids these common errors.

Home | The Future of Food

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught valuable lessons about resource planning to leaders in every industry, but there has been no industry that has emerged as more crucial during a global crisis than food and beverage.

The strength of our supply chain was questioned very early on in the pandemic, when stockpiling of non-perishables and frozen foods hit an all-time high.

The right enterprise resource planning solution puts businesses in a position not only to withstand a global crisis, but with proper insight, planning and execution, ERP could help that business excel above its competitors and establish itself as an industry leader.

This is how:

Supply chain visibility
A good ERP program will provide advanced visibility into the entire supply chain, giving you the information needed to react quickly to shifts in market demands. Our team of experts can help you select an ERP platform that streamlines your distribution, reduces paperwork, and cuts costs.

Demand planning
Depending on your ERP needs, your consultant will help you select a platform with the right modules for your business, including options that offer forecasting to ensure your products reach your customers when they’re needed.

Manufacturing support
Food and beverage manufacturers usually leverage more ERP modules than the average business, and you’ll need to select a platform that can handle a variety of production environments, and provides the flexibility to switch modes to meet any shifts in demand.

Increased safety
There has never been a time in history when food safety has been more of a focus. Consumers are demanding an increased level of hygiene and safe packaging and handling. ERP platforms can provide insight into your company’s processes, and if contamination ever occurs, the right program will make it easy for you to trace the problem back to the specific shipment and limit future issues.

In short, ERP software is essential to move the food and beverage industry forward. Contact us today and we’ll introduce you to an ERP expert in your industry that can help you select and implement the right program for your business.

Home | Why You Need ERP To Move Your Post-COVID Business Forward

As we all know, disruption is a great instigator of change, and the world has never seen a disruption to business quite as significant as the current coronavirus crisis. As businesses resume operations, going back to a new normal will not be enough.

To learn from the current situation, businesses must now operate in a way that ensures they can respond immediately and seamlessly to the next crisis that seems to be inevitable. As a whole, our economy was not prepared for this, but we must be prepared for the next one.

A large part of this preparation will be the new policies and processes that business-owners will need to adopt to scale their business in a post-COVID economy, and ensure they are alert and aware of each element of their business operations.

Traditional post-crisis recovery models allocate few resources to things like information-sharing and expansion, but in this situation, they definitely should. To be successful in a post-COVID economy, businesses will need to scale operations to focus on shifting consumer demands, and a cloud-based ERP application is the most effective and efficient driver.

ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning systems integrate a business’s inventory management, ordering system, accounting, personnel files and resource allotment into a single source of truth – one place that stakeholders can go to access all the information they need about what’s happening in their company, where there challenges may lie and any pending resource shortages.

Cloud-based ERP solutions provide complete transparency into how a company is performing, what is going on behind the scenes, identify new opportunities and risks, and provides notifications of resources that are needed. This happens automatically, all day, every day.  Businesses with cloud-based ERP also enjoy data and insights that help them learn from any mistakes that may have happened, manage their recovery and plan for the future.

Imagine if you were a sanitizer business with at the beginning of this coronavirus outbreak. Imagine if you had systems in place to notify you as soon as supplies got low. Imagine how things could have been different. The right ERP solution could be exactly what was missing.

Home | Best Practices for Effective ERP Implementation

Planning an ERP and implementing the project is a challenging venture for any company. Here are some best practices that will help you implement smoothly and effectively.

Get buy-in from the top

ERP selection and implementation requires research, purchasing, customization and implementation, and each of these steps takes time and resources. You’ll need support from the senior executives at your company, which can be challenging as you’ll have to justify the financial and human resources required. Ensuring your senior management understands the importance of this technology, and the extent of which a proper ERP can help your business grow.

Choosing the right solution

Choosing the right ERP solution is critical. Many vendors will try and oversell you on their product, and get you excited about features it offers, even if these are features that you’ll never use. ERP customization is key to a successful implementation, so choosing an ERP consultant that knows the product options, has learned your business and has a good understanding of which modules your company needs (and which is doesn’t), will be critical to helping you find the right solution for your company, without overpaying for modules and features you won’t use. Select your consultant carefully. Look for one with experience in your industry, and be sure to invest the time into building their knowledge of your business and every element of its operations.

Build the right team

Even after you’ve selected your consultant, a successful implementation requires a group of dedicated problem-solvers whose full-time job is this project. Find the brightest minds in your organization and assign them to this task. Because this will require back-filling their current positions, this is challenging to do, especially if you don’t have full buy-in from your senior executives.

Assign a strong leader

The best ERP implementations are led by diligent, curious, inspirational leaders who prioritize research and experimentation and do whatever it takes to stick to deadlines. This person should have both leadership and project management skills.

Scope creep

Every project manager at every company in every industry has battled scope creep. At some point, a stakeholder will push to broaden the scope of the project which typically diverts the project from its original purpose and causes deadlines to be moved and missed. The strong leader you’ve assigned should be empowered to push back and let stakeholders know that their requests can be tackled after the initial project is complete.

Invest in training

It’s important that your team is properly trained on the ERP system before you launch. About 30% of the resources dedicated to this project should be used for training and support.

Implementing ERP isn’t easy, but it’s certainly worthwhile. Things will go wrong at some point, but if you’ve implemented properly and trained thoroughly, you’ll prepared.

Home | Postmodern ERP Advisors

It’s the direction we’re headed. By 2025 organizations will buy 40% of their enterprise business capabilities through aggregator platforms. It’s a timely and strategic move to evolve your business with enterprise business capabilities. It’s imperative that you stay atop the latest technology platforms and deploy plug-and-play business functions. Adopt new applications and capabilities.

The technology is already being implemented. Let us help you provide aggregated platforms via PaaS. Here are some of the ways we’re opening up technology platforms:
* Connect easily with other applications despite increasingly varied processes and data architectures. Organizations are also open to using capabilities that are delivered by iPaaS providers
* Decrease the gaps using sophisticated API models
* Customers use marketplacy offerings from consulting partners and platform vendors.

What’s driving the EBC platforms?

Industry specific: Solutions will require customization, yet utilizing an aggregator vendor can help clients assemble, connect and manage applications to avoid the cost of customization and increase the speed in which platforms can be implemented.
Unified access and experience: Aggregator vendors can decrease the back-end systems that support ERP) and mask the complexity to provide a smooth transition, assessment and deployment of new features
Reporting and analytics: Business Intelligence will be faster than ever, with real time analytic data. Extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) processes needed by data warehouses. Acquire, inject, update and manage data as a deliverable for your business
Simplified contract and payment options: Streamline the payment process and simplify charges encourages enterprises to buy more because they can project costs
Faster: Customers and vendors will face complex challenges, aggregator vendors will offer smooth transitions using technology platforms, simplifying and adopting line of business (LOB) functional services

We’re here to help you make the switch and utilize an aggregator, simplify your bundle and increase your market share. Enterprises that don’t execute a business-outcome-focused strategy will miss out on revenue.

We will acquire capabilities from multiple sources to support your enterprise to create a resource that allows a smooth transition for our clients using aggregator platforms.

If you’re considering aggregator platforms you should:

Develop and continuously update a business capability model, even in divisions in different industries
Choose and aggregator that can support a multi cloud strategy, preventing limits
Develop an agile application governance and stay updated
Keep people and processes in mind in all aspects of innovation
Be aggressive at adopting enhancements to improve business processes and decommission customizations.

Let us help you invest in an aggregator platform that will yield the best results for your business. We look forward to working with you.

Home | Using ERP to Prepare For the Post-COVID Economy

The COVID-19 crisis has impacted every industry across the globe. Many companies have pivoted faster than others, making operational changes to every element of their business. While governments navigate the re-opening of the economies in some areas, business are strategizing how to get on a path that will help them recover quickly when the time is right.

These businesses are faced with an interesting challenge, because ‘going back to normal’ simply isn’t going to happen. There will be a new normal, and that new normal will bring many opportunities for businesses to capitalize on if they plan properly. In order to be successful in the post-COVID economy, businesses must be agile. They must be ready to act quickly when laws, regulations, resource availability and demand spikes change. This will require a deep understanding of every part of the business so that whether a change affects the sales, marketing, finance, production or development department, every area is ready to pivot and take advantage of any opportunity that arises. Proper ERP is critical to developing this type of agility.

This is why.

Setting the foundation
ERP sits at the centre of a business and bring together its value chain. By tracking, amalgamating and analyzing every element of the business, ERP provides data-driven insights that give decision-makers the visibility into business operations needed to understand what is happening today, what can/will happen tomorrow, and set the stage for years of success.

Responding faster
Cloud-based ERP gives business stakeholders all the information they need about what is currently happening within the company to make decisions around its future processes, operations and agility. It helps them understand all the intricacies occurring behind-the-scenes in the business, where the risks lie, which resources or inventory is needed, plus it gives them access to these insights all day, every day. It also provides the ability to analyze information to learn from past mistakes, understand the current business environment that they’re operating in, and look for opportunities that may not have been visible otherwise.

Imagine knowing which areas of the supply chain will be impacted by a pandemic or any other major crisis. What if, pre-COVID, the decision-makers at Clorox or Lysol had known about the pending demand for their cleaning wipes? How would things have changed? A proper, cloud-based ERP system could make this possible.

Feel free to reach out with any ERP software, implementation or business technology needs. ERP Advisers are open to help you and your business thrive in any economy.

Home | Why Manufacturers Need ERP Now More Than Ever

As COVID-19 spreads and panic-being causes shortages of certain goods, many manufacturers are focused on increasing automation. However, while automation has great potential to help keep our shelves stocked with cleaning wipes, toilet paper and face masks, a shift in process will only be possible for companies with the supplies they need to keep producing.

We have seen great shifts in manufacturing during this pandemic – from ramping up the production of hand sanitizer to the conversion of automotive plants into ventilator factories.  Manufacturers are under pressure to pivot production quickly, with little resources. Production teams are being minimized to reduce exposure to the virus, increasing the need of more automation on the plant floor.

For products that already have a highly-automated production process, the biggest barrier keeping them out of the stores is the supply chain.

Manufacturers will face different challenges in the short-term and the long-term. At first the challenge will be securing supplies from sources higher up on the supply chain. However, long-term, challenges will be linked more closely with the operation of their supplier’s suppliers. In order to mitigate these challenges, manufacturers must should start sourcing their components from multiple sources located in multiple locations.

This will likely spur a significant increase in the amount manufacturer’s spend on ERP software, especially those with inventory control and supply chain management modules, as the panic-buying that has occurred since the beginning of COVID-19 has exposed major weaknesses in the global supply chain.

The right ERP solution can drastically help manufacturers adapt to changes in the supply chain. There are typically two supply chains that manufactures must consider. The first is the physical supply chain (actual products), and the second is the digital supply chain (information).  Using the right ERP system will empower manufacturers to blend their production, distribution, and acquisition processes to allow them flexibility in their operations.

Automation can be a game-changer, especially in these trying times, but it will not make much difference for a manufacture without a reliable flow of materials.

ERP Advisers is here to help you find and implement the right ERP solution for your business. Contact us to set up a consultation.

Home | Choosing Your ERP Software Partners

The right enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is important to the continuity of your business, but choosing who to work with to help select, customize and implement this software is critical to its success.

What is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning is the integrated management of a business’ main processes, and ERP software is a way to execute and monitor this integration. ERP software facilitates the exchange of information throughout a company, helping to speed up business processes, cut costs, increase sales, improve quality, create positive customer experiences and measure successes and failures.

Purchase partners
ERP software comes in modules that perform a specific function – examples include accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, payroll, purchase orders etc. ERP suites require customization to be a good fit for a specific business.
To select their software, companies may choose to work directly with a software vendor. However, due to the wide range of options and customization needs of each business, it is recommended to work with a partner who can weigh the pros and cons of many different software suites and help each business decide which solution is right for them, especially when it comes time to customize and implement. This would be either a value-added software reseller, or an ERP consultant.

Value-Added Resellers (VARs)
VARs are recruited and trained by the software vendors to sell products on their behalf. VARs invest in their own technical staff, training facilities, workspace and software purchases and they usually share a percentage of sales with the software vendor.
ERP purchasers should remember that that while VARs also perform consulting functions, their advice may be impacted by their relationships with certain suppliers.

Consultants
Consultants with financial, accounting and software expertise often provide a different perspective and approach than a VAR. Consultants are typically selected based on comprehensive experience in specific industries, intensive knowledge about particular ERP software modules, or both. Selecting an industry expert that is able to compare the situations of similar companies they have worked with before can be valuable in helping them choose which suite will work best for a specific business.

Working with an ERP consultant provides a business with invaluable experience and expertise. Reach out to ERP Advisers today to discuss how we can help find the right solution for your business at this critical time.

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