5 Important Reasons to Transform your ERP

Time for a transformation?

If your current ERP does not contain critical information, allows users to enter critical data, or resizes pages to fit the screen of the user, it is time to upgrade or transform your ERP. Work with your team and suppliers to ensure that the ERP functionality you decide on meets your business needs, regulatory compliance, and industry best practices in implementation.

If you are using a SaaS ERP system, you should make sure that your upgrade decision is based on the potential impact on your business operations. Your ERP solution provider can sell you great features and upgrades, but when implementing new ERP software, business needs should guide your decision. When new investors evaluate your business processes, they need to update their ERP systems to support their needs and preferences.

Why Upgrade

Businesses continue moving to cloud ERP. The global cloud ERP market is expected to grow 13.6% annually and reach $40.5 billion by 2025. | Statista

Transforming, or upgrading your ERP system enables you to implement business processes and workflows based on new industry best practices. New ERP technologies are emerging that make the ERP upgrade experience plug and play and provide compelling motivation to upgrade an ERP today. If your company is unsure whether to switch ERP systems, the benefits of ERP upgrades can help you decide.

Transforming your ERP system shouldn’t be thought of as a simple IT initiative, but as a strategic lever to leapfrog the competition and enable integration, process standardization, and improvements in the operation of your organization. Transforming your ERP can increase productivity for users and achieve a good return on investment.

Updating your business management system is less about the software itself and more about transforming the company. As a growing company, you need to look at your software system to make sure it can meet your future needs. While your ERP system is an excellent resource for managing and developing ERP project plans, the decision whether to update your business management software should not be only made by your IT department.

In a business environment where companies are always trying to beat the competition and work with limited resources to keep up with new requirements, you need the latest ERP system in your corner. Staying up to date with your ERP software system keeps your company competitive and gives you the advantage over more advanced companies. Here are a few of the top reasons to consider transforming your ERP.

Growing Business Needs

Organizations usually implement ERPs for specific reasons, like streamlining production or supporting a jump in business. When maintenance fees climb to support customizations or licensing needs to be rethought to meet the demands of a quickly growing team, older ERP systems will no longer be the best choice. Transforming your ERP can enhance the growth of your team without the need to generate additional work.

No Real-Time Information

With the growing number of business intelligence capabilities available in the data-driven business environment today (Microsoft Power BI, Google Analytics, OData, and more), it will be critical to creating value by interpreting and curating information. You need to know which parts of your business are working and which are not, and you need to do it quickly. Searching for up-to-date information slows down decision-making and impairs the ability to solve problems.

Aging technology

IT staff are in charge of maintaining legacy systems around the clock and are constantly fighting fires, so your company is never in a position to strategically plan for the future. Many manufacturers still using an older ERP are faced with inefficient technology and infrastructure on the factory premises, which can significantly impact profit and efficiency.

Changing Regulations

Across a number of industries, adopting a Cloud-based ERP is the best way to manage things like taxes, regulations, and compliance that can change annually, or sometimes quicker. Modern ERP solutions are able to automatically update to accommodate changing requirements, something legacy systems were never meant to do.

Support for a Mobile Workforce

The cloud enables scalability when you add employees anywhere in the world. Exploiting the potential of today’s decentralized world, an increasing number of workers are working on mobile devices on the move with tablets, laptops, and telephones. Cloud ERP solutions transform mobility into clear business advantage and provide a seamless transition between the office, home, and mobile experience.

Final Thoughts:

Companies spend a lot of time weighing whether or not they should upgrade their ERP systems to the latest version and many are unsure whether or not they can say when the right time is to upgrade. There are a lot of reasons to improve your ERP systems and the last push to move forward depends on current pain points, business requirements, and goals. The top reasons why organizations implement ERP solutions:

• 34.24% – shift away from legacy systems
• 23.32% – upgrade
• 14.14% – shift within Tier I (ERP vendors with 750 million annual revenue)
• 13.13% – shifting to Tier II (ERP vendors with 250–750 million annual revenue)
• 7.07% – shift within Tier II
• 4.04% – shift within Tier III (ERP vendors that serve mostly SMEs)
• 4.04% – shifting to a lower-tier
• Panorama Consulting Group, 2020

Failing to update your legacy software, however, almost guarantees you’ll face slow system performance, errors, or worse. It’s understandable that so many companies are hesitant to upgrade before their systems are operational. With SaaS ERP systems, the physical installation of new software is not necessary, but organizations still need to adapt to new software features and functionality. A new version of an ERP software system is not just about new features and functionalities. It is also about improving workflows, new business processes, improving user interaction, and optimizing layout and design. Although modernization of an existing ERP system may not involve the same upheaval as a new implementation, it is still an important technology project that generates significant costs and needs to be completed correctly.

Author Bio:

XcelPros Team: At XcelPros – A Microsoft Dynamics Partner, Our team brings together years of experience and a high level of technical expertise. We strive to generate high-quality, engaging content with up-to-date information from reliable sources.