“More and better” is being asked of the few in modern companies looking to compete. More analysis, more support, more output. Better analysis, better decisions, better service to customers. It’s no wonder that as businesses reach the breaking point between efficiency and performance they are looking for better and faster tools and systems to fulfill these demands.
Apps Simplifying Life
Unlike in past decades, today the average worker understands how technology can be used to make life easier. Most of them live the concept every day as they download the latest app onto their phones in order to make some aspect of their personal lives more manageable. With this in mind, it’s important to realize that your employees have become increasingly more tech savvy. Along with this, they have become much more critical of the systems and tools they are given at the workplace as they are asked to do “more and better” with possibly outdated systems and tools.
Replace?
Within this modern business and technical environment IT Departments find themselves moving to evaluate whether their ERP systems are sufficient to keep up – often at the urging of the workers, users, and management using them. Many find that older ERP’s are not keeping up and are falling behind compared to what their users have available so easily in their personal lives.
Thus begins a long process of evaluating new ERP systems and choosing the right fit. These projects can become time consuming, expensive, risky, and disruptive to the business as they must continue to compete and survive. What are the alternatives?
Reinvent with Apps?
Returning to the concept of the modern tech savvy user, we can identify that businesses can follow the same trend of applying apps to their current environment in order to provide better, faster tools in specific areas to enhance and increase analysis, productivity and collaboration. This Apps Approach leverages existing data from the current ERP into specific, focused areas where gaps exist. It allows businesses to mitigate the risks and costs associated with ERP conversion projects and reallocate them to smaller, less expensive and quicker mini projects into focused areas. Users can see a quick return from working with better, faster tools that use the same data they are used to seeing. They quickly adopt these tools and systems just as they would a new app on their phone.
Another advantage of the Apps Approach is that an implementation plan can be adjusted or changed easily. Mini projects of this type tend to be less intrusive and disruptive to a company as a whole. Lastly, and in the end, if a software provider doesn’t deliver on agreed functionality or support, it is easier to move away and find, evaluate and work with a new one.
In conclusion, there is a strong case to be made for evaluating the Apps Approach before pursuing a full-fledged replacement of an ERP system. The risks and costs associated with ERP replacement are high. Your employees are familiar with the Apps Approach in their day-to-day lives and may be more willing to engage in these types of quick, easy, high return type implementations. It gives you more options and the ability to change course or make adjustments to the plan as each app comes on line. You can find ways to leverage all that old data into new, interesting and high return solutions that allow your team to do great work.
