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Home | ERP Revolutionary Changes in 2020

ERP Revolutionary Changes in 2020
Part 1

What opportunities do ERP’s see? Unparallel opportunities to transform and improve efficiency to capitalize on. It’s important for Chief Information Officers to utilize this window of opportunity by preparing sourcing strategies, technologies and skills, with appropriate expectations.

What’s changing?

1. A new era or ERP, EBC “Enterprise Business Capabilities”. We are shifting, making use of new capabilities for application platforms, integration and low-code/no-code development.
2. Fundamental new ways people acquire new capabilities from applications.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will be a part of every ERP business plan, using multiple business processes.
4. Cloud ERP, it’s never been easier.

What should Chief Information Officers do next?

Be open and embrace new technologies and keep utilizing existing applications that play a vital role. Artificial intelligence and machine learning offer business opportunities never seen before, investigate and integrate them into your business to increase revenue. Make sure you’re willing to commit fully when implementing a new platform to see best results.

What do you need to know?

Gain insight into the upcoming business challenges and the unparallel opportunities that are available from the new ERP>EBC. AI and ML offer more diversity and an increase in productivity, that increase the speed and the adaptability your business offer. ERPs can help you rise to the challenge and help implement new systems and methods. There is a need to simplify integration and capabilities.

How a new ERP platform can help your business?

Moving away from self-maintenance of point-to-point integration and adopting platform as service (PaaS) and integration platform as a service (iPaaS). ERPs will change the way you do business using the same applications, yet incorporating new capabilities or acquiring new services, or a combination of them.

New simplified platform technologies can be implemented, low-code development, process automation and the capability of running multiple applications on multiple platforms in the cloud.

In a competitive market creating a strategic plan to implement new systems will allow your company to gain the market share. Use applications, data and processes rather than integration technologies alone. On-demand “modeling” environment needs to replace the sandbox, which can contain old data.

Incorporate predictions and stay ahead of the learning curve to implement artificial intelligence and machine. Be prepared, updates and vendor capabilities will be happening quickly. Source educated talent and skills for a smooth implementation to automate and create smoother business transitions. Derive a strategic ERP plan to utilize these new platforms that enable a smooth transition and new capabilities. New ERP solutions and capabilities are a welcomed and exciting change that can increase your bottom line.

Customization, implementing new system processes ensures your business is on top of the curve.

Home | The Role of ERP in Higher Education

While it’s wonderful that colleges and universities are deeply rooted in tradition (think ivy-covered walls and centuries-old teachings), an attachment to the past simply isn’t efficient when it comes to running a business. And, according to a collaborative report from Education Dive and Unit4, nearly 50% of academic institutions are using out-dated systems to execute their administrative operations.

Current state of the industry

The Education Dive report surveyed back-office staff (in the IT, HR, and Student Services departments) from higher education centres to determine which systems are now in use. Around half of these employees noted that their institutions:

• Use multiple systems, rather than one time-saving model;
• Are unable to fix inefficiencies or streamline their operations with their current programs;
• And have systems that do not provide the necessary strategic data for decision-making processes.

Why is this a problem?

In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing climate, it’s essential for businesses to use technology that is highly adaptive and flexible. By using out-of-date, ineffective systems, not only are institutions preventing themselves from meeting new industry demands—they’re slowing themselves down. With low informational transfer, reduced data collection, and the creation of bottlenecks, these antiquated solutions create silos between departments, setting the stage for unsatisfactory organizational visibility as a whole.

In turn, this can frustrate staff, create obstacles for student success, reduce staff retention, prevent innovation, and lead to poor student experiences. Together, these issues can spell total disaster for any higher education establishment.

What’s the solution?

Luckily, these problems can be prevented using modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. By automating certain business processes, aligning ERP systems with their true needs, and focusing on efficient data management, institutions will bring their operations out of the past—and into the present.

By implementing the proper platform for their unique requirements, higher education providers can:

• Improve decision-making processes;
• Enhance departmental productivity;
• Increase employee efficiency and reduce attrition;
• Provide better student support services;
• And meet future student needs with greater flexibility.

If your institution’s operations are struggling to stay ahead of—or even with—the curve, a customized, intuitive ERP system is absolutely the way to go. ERP Advisers is here to help: to learn more about our services or to get started, visit our ERP Project Management page.

Home | Meeting Your Match: The importance of finding an IT Systems Consultant

You wouldn’t build a house without consulting an architect—so why would you lay the foundations for your business’ computing structure without expert advice?

In our technologically-driven world, it is essential that your company’s IT operations are running at peak capacity; otherwise, you’ll be rendered obsolete. This is where an IT Systems Consultant comes in: with their industry experience, they can ensure that your data storage, network function, and computer-based client services are functioning optimally.

Why hire an IT Consultant?

As mentioned, IT Consultants can provide the specialized knowledge you need to enhance your technological capabilities—and improve your overall functionality.

When you hire an IT Consultant, they’ll:
• Teach you how to best achieve your business objectives via your IT systems. This can boost your efficiency, performance, and bottom line;
• Provide exclusive, objective expertise backed by years of industry experience;
• And eliminate the need to hire a permanent employee—their services can be used temporarily, allowing you to save money in the long run.

What can an IT Consultant do for my business?

Through their work, IT consultants can augment your business’ offerings in a number of arenas.

IT Consultants can:
• Improve your productivity. By upgrading your IT systems, they can enhance your ability to effectively service your clients, securely manage your data, and remain agile in an increasingly fluid environment;
• Enable the full potential of your current IT infrastructure by identifying areas for improvement, critical function, and value;
• Help your business scale its IT infrastructure throughout growth, implement cutting-edge tech as it is released, and plan the long-term IT strategy of your business;
• And provide a sound IT governance framework for security and compliance.

At ERP Advisers, we are fully equipped to help you derive the highest value from your IT investments. With 30 years of expertise in this sector, we can assist you with the deployment and administration of new apps and platforms, optimize your current landscape, and ensure your IT infrastructure meets your unique needs.

What are you waiting for? Click here to get started.

Home | These 3 “gotcha” moments could ruin your ERP implementation

The “gotcha” moment. We’ve all experienced it before: you’re working on a project and everything’s going smoothly—until some seemingly benign error renders your work redundant.

Lucky for you, we know how to avoid dreaded “gotcha” moments during Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations. Here’s a look into three key issues that may arise, and essential ways to steer clear of them.
“Gotcha” #1: Mismanaged Team Members

In order for your project to flow smoothly, your staff must be properly equipped to manage each step of the process.

Key problems:
• Placing too much pressure on IT staff. Because ERP projects often involve upgrades to computing infrastructure, IT Managers are assigned as their sponsors. However, undertakings of this sort require managers with more organizational influence.
• Relying too heavily on outside consultants. While our expertise is beneficial, weak inclusion of inside staff can result in a lack of much-needed organizational knowledge.

Key Solutions:
• Assign a full-time Senior VP (or other business expert) to each ERP implementation. During this time, their other positions should be back-filled to reduce stress.
• Find the right set of outside consultants for your needs. At ERP Advisers, we’ll work in tandem with your employees, ensuring they have the tools needed for long-term success.

“Gotcha” #2: Poor Project Planning

When it comes to ERP implementations, improper planning can take an incredible financial toll on your business.

Key Problems:
• Underestimating the complexity and speed of ERP implementations. By miscalculating the time and effort required to complete these projects, schedules may become stretched out—and deadlines missed. This can result in exceeded budgets, missed deliverables, and an overall loss of organizational interest.

Key Solutions:
• Contain the scope of your project. Review your plans with highly-experienced outside consultants, like ERP Advisers, to ensure that they are realistic and achievable.
• Follow a long-term multiple-release strategy. By implementing ERP modules in palatable portions, your team can stay abreast of all changes.

“Gotcha” #3: Ignoring the Aftermath

ERP implementation causes a variety of changes to occur within any business. As a result, it is integral that your staff are prepared to manage any and all adjustments to your business processes.

Key Problem:
• Overlooking change management efforts. ERP implementation may eliminate, automate, or integrate certain processes, all of which must be planned for.

Key Solution:
• Foresee necessary changes. As we’ve stated, planning is incredibly important. By recognizing the potential for significant changes, you can ensure that your team has the resources needed to carry them out.

With our individualized approach to all ERP implementation, we’ll keep these “gotcha” moments from getting you down. Click here (https://erpadvisers.com/erp-project-management/) to learn more about our services.

Home | How to improve your business operations and bottom line

All small and large scale business owners are constantly presented with various opportunities to improve their business processes, get more customers, become more visible, and increase productivity. Improving your business processes also helps you save a lot of money and run your business more effectively.

Here are 6 ways to improve business operations and bottom line:

• Plan your day: Before stepping to your business premises on a daily basis, it is imperative to create a time when you could jot down your plans for the day and review what your activities will look like. Write down your marketing strategies, product lines, new projects that you intend to embark on, details on how to expand your business, names of your competitors are and strategize on how to stay ahead.
• Review your business plan: It is also vital to review your business plan monthly. So many business owners tend to forget about their business plans a few months after establishing their firm, some even digress towards other areas. That is why it is essential to find your business plan, review it, and get it updated. Look at the changes you must have introduced into your business since its inception and get them included in your business plan.
• Make use of the latest technologies: At present, there are so many technologies that can help improve your internal systems and communications. Making use of various technologies in your firms helps to automate tasks, simplify processes, and make things easy for your employees.
• Engage with your customers: What keeps businesses running are the customers, quality of products, and customer satisfaction. Therefore you must engage with your customers on a daily basis: get their phone numbers, emails, contact information from your database and send them messages reminding them that your business is ready to serve them better. Remember to ask them to leave feedback about your business.
• Get your employees involved: Employees are an essential element in every business. You must make your employees part of your business; help them understand their role, review your relationship with them, and find new ways of getting them motivated to avoid any form of friction.
• Review your business performance and pricing: It is also vital to set up new metrics that can be used in reviewing your business performance at least twice in a year. Take stock of all aspects of your business operation and write down the areas you will like to initiate some positive changes. In addition, try to know the prices of goods set by your competitors and ensure that yours isn’t too low or high; before increasing your prices, ensure that you get your customers informed ahead of time.

Finally, as a small or medium scale business owner improving your business operations and bottom line can help increase productivity, save you lots of money, get you more customers, make your business visible and keep your employees motivated. Using the steps listed above can help you stay ahead of your competitors while improving your business processes.

Home | 5 Phases of Planning Your ERP System

Choosing a good ERP system isn’t just enough; it is also vital for every organization to have a laid down procedure of how to plan this system. Following a structured approach to planning from discovery, process analysis and planning to Going-Live and support gives the organization a better opportunity to realize the full potentials of the software.

5 Phases of Planning Your ERP System   

There are essentially five stages of planning your ERP system, and they include the following:

• Discovery, Process Analysis, and Planning: Before searching for a solution, it is essential to carefully conduct an inventory of the organizations need. This also includes creating a group that consists of employees from different departments who make use of the ERP system. The overall aim of doing this is to have a comprehensive understanding of what the organization needs, challenges, tools, and resources are. An essential part of this stage involves group members having a meeting to develop a comprehensive project plan that will serve as a guide all through the project planning process.
• System Design: This stage involves designing a new enterprise system and mapping out ways of using the system to meet the need of an organization. In this stage, the project and implementation teams work together to map-out various configurations for new systems, documenting standard procedures and defining new roles for the organization.
• System Build-out: This stage involves the development and configuration of a solution customized using the specification listed in stage two to meet the need of an organization.
• Training and Testing: Once the new system design has been deployed for use, it is essential to carry out a training program that addresses the needs, training scope and schedules of the organizations. While some employees may need just one-day training others may benefit from three or four days of training. In addition, it is vital to ensure that the system is tested thoroughly before rolling it out company-wide.
• Go-Live and Support: The final stage involves making the solution Go-Live for use. There is also a need to provide support at least for the first one month to employees who might be using the system for the first time. The project team must be available to answer questions that may arise. In addition, once the ERP system goes live, the role of the project team changes, all they need to do is provide adjustment and changes to the system configurations when needed.

Finally, an ERP system is of great importance to every organization; it has the capability of transforming how people work, streamlining task, automating actions and optimizing processes. As stated earlier, having a good ERP system isn’t just enough, there are laid down processes that must be followed when planning your EPR system to ensure you get maximum value out of your ERP investment. At ERP Advisers, we will be there every step of the way during the implementation of new technology in your business. We will work with you to not only improve your services and processes but to also improve  your bottom line.

Home | Simple Rules to Making a Successful Business Introduction

In today’s world, introductions have become more important both in our personal and professional lives. But many of us think that introductions are not everyone’s cup of tea. However, this notion is completely false, and you must take the leadership role to make your brand and business prosperous.

In business, there is nothing more powerful than a compelling introduction. This is a thing that you need to take care of with utmost professionalism. Here are some effective measures you can take to make any business introduction more effective:

Double opt-in works the best:

Single opt-in introductions can come as a surprise to both or either of the persons, and it is lazy as well. Double opt-in is the best and non-lazy way of introducing two people to each other. You give other people a choice and a solid reason to meet the other person. And they both can benefit from each other’s experience.

Consider the rank:

A business introduction is a social act, and you have to consider the ranks, professionalism, and power of both the parties. For a higher ranked professional, you have to write in more of a requesting tone. For a person having low rank, it becomes more of a duty to attend the conversation.

Make it simple and real:

Do not make the situation complex by adding too much data. Write to the point and only talk about business. When it comes to deciding the time for the meeting, give them 5 to 6-time slots in a week or month to choose from. Again prefer the time suggested by the higher ranked person, respect the rank and you’ll surely find success. Don’t make them do the work. Don’t ask them to suggest times, don’t ask them to pick a time off of your online calendar tool.

Show gratitude:

Thank your colleague for the introduction.  If a conversation develops into something more, be sure to re-thank the colleague who introduced you to keep them in the loop and aware.

Business introductions are the single most powerful way to make new connections and have them turn into real opportunities.  Treat them with care and respect they deserve.

Home | Benefits of Cloud ERP System for a Small Business

With technological advancements making our lives easier day by day it is highly doubtful that any field of life has been left unaffected. We have increased the efficiency of doing things in every field of life including business. Things like data collection and analysis that previously used to take hours or even days can now be done within seconds by just one click of a button. Many small business owners have stopped the old practices of bookkeeping and handling accounts manually and have shifted to ERP systems instead. These Enterprise Resource Planning systems are a life saver for owners of small businesses because they are quick and effective and increase the overall efficiency of the whole business. ERP systems are now greatly developed and come with a multitude of features and most of the small and medium scale businesses are of the view that cloud-based ERP systems are extremely beneficial for them. There are multiple benefits of a cloud ERP system for small business, some of which are discussed below.

Security:

Data theft is one of the biggest challenges to small businesses and there is a long debate on whether on-premise ERP systems have better security features or could ERP but most of the business owners think that cloud ERP systems have proven to be more safe and secure. As all the information is stored on a cloud they are required to have stricter security checks which in turn makes data more secure. Another advantage of cloud ERP system is that by using it you can restrict the flow of data to some people in your company. Everyone cannot access all the data that is uploaded on the server. This feature makes it all the more secure because the risk of data theft from within the organization is greatly reduced.

Productivity:

One of the major concerns of small business owners is that introducing a new technology in the business can interrupt the normal functioning of the business for some time. While this might be true for only a little while it has been proven by various success stories that incorporation of cloud ERP systems has resulted in a significant increase in productivity of any business. With an effective ERP system in place, everything becomes streamlined, no time is wasted on useless tasks, employees have access to all the files that they need and they don’t have to get from one department to another searching for files. This not only saves time but also increases productivity.

Cheaper than In-House IT department:

For small businesses implementing and maintaining an in-house IT department is not only not required it can be very expensive too. When you think about the cost of all the hardware, software, IT experts, office space, electricity bill etc. the whole picture becomes very clear that for small businesses cloud ERP system is the best choice. The monthly fee of a cloud ERP system is a very good cost-effective solution for small business owners to get all the benefits of a fully equipped IT department at a fraction of the cost.

If you are interested in learning about ERP system to help you grow your small business, we would love to speak with you. With the right, trusted technology partner by your side, we can improve your production, productivity and profitability. Call ERP Advisers today!

Home | If you are too busy to install ERP software for your venue, than it’s really a sign that you NEED one!

We hear this line all the time from prospects and business owners of venues: “Your technology/ ERP software would really help us but we are too busy at the moment to implement anything like this”. It’s true that the seasonality of events is giving way to a year-long cycle where event and wedding venues are busier and busier.

This makes having an all-in-one platform for events & weddings even more important to the overall success of your venue.

The reality is, if you are too busy to invest in ERP software that will significantly lighten your workload, improve your operations and bottom line, then you especially need to make the investment. The problem is that misconceptions exist about just how disruptive such an implementation is to venues.

Here are 3 big misconceptions about implementing ERP system in a hospitality business:

1. Implementation is too time-consuming

This isn’t a sales technique, an empty promise meant to trick you into adding another item to the to-do list. If you are struggling to manage your email inbox, the contracts take weeks to send out, and the venue tours and show-arounds are frequently time-wasting no-shows – think how much time you could save with an effective technology system in place.

The truth is that implementation is not time-consuming. We start out with an implementation road-map for your venue, having discussed your current process and structure. We also want to know you can manage inquiries and bookings well. Then we set-up your account as discussed and input your data, from ongoing inquiries to your database of contacts. Finally, we hold a training session. After that we work closely with you to add in training and guidance on other features your venue will benefit from.

If I told you that in exchange for 2 to 3-hours of your time, I could save you 20 plus-hours over the next few weeks, chances are you wouldn’t believe me but I would love to show you how!

2. I’d love this, but my team (in some cases the owner) is not as tech-savvy

People don’t give themselves or their team-members enough credit. Opinions of software are based upon older generation products in the hospitality sector and can be really easy to leverage.

If you can navigate a smartphone, you’ll be able to navigate an internal technology system.

3. My events program has been growing, without a platform

Amazing! This is a testament to your hard-work and the sweat and tears you’ve put in. But even if you feel your wedding and events program has maxed out and you couldn’t possibly do any more of either (or you simply don’t want to), you have to consider the other benefits of a centralized system.

For example, a lot of busy event venues we work with experienced issues with staff retention. The stress of overflowing inboxes, the occasional difficult bride and groom, and the constant flow of paperwork, is a significant contributor to burnout.

Having a centralized, all-in-one, cloud-based platform is a huge relief to all of the above. Richard Branson is fond of saying “If you look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple.” We couldn’t agree more with him. A lot of that starts with giving them the tools they need. Take the next steps in investing the in the growth of your business. ERP Advisers would love to be your trusted partner.

Home | 5 Dimensions of Authentic Leadership

Five Dimensions of Authentic Leadership

1.Pursuing purpose with a passion. Without a real sense of purpose, you are at the mercy of your ego and narcissistic vulnerabilities.

2.Practicing solid values. Leaders are defined by their values, and values are personal; they cannot be externally imposed.

3.Leading with heart. Authentic leaders lead with their hearts as well as with their heads.

4. Establishing enduring relationships. The ability to develop enduring relationships is one of the hallmarks of authentic leaders.

5. Demonstrating self discipline. Success takes a consistently high level of self discipline.

If you’d like to read more or discover the services provided by ERP Advisers, give us a call today or complete the website contact form.

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