ERP Readiness Part 2: Does My Company Have the IT Resources Available to Research Potential ERP Solutions?

Determining whether your business needs a new ERP solution requires answering a number of questions. With industry trends including an always connected marketplace, businesses face an expectation from their customers to be accessible regardless of the time of day. They want to purchase and access products and services, and have access to manage their account online though their mobile devices. The same is true for other business partners in the value chain. They want real-time access on their Smartphones to place a product order and want to be empowered with access to real-time account management to pay accounts receivable in between their busy schedule.

These considerations translates into questions like “does my business have internal IT resources to support the adoption of an ERP solution?” or “what are our requirements for an ERP solution?” After all, there are many other trends that could result in the need for support of additional processes. For example, whether an ERP solution is able to seamlessly integrate with eCommerce software or another question might surround the need for business analytics with drill down to source documents with workflow and Outlook integrations. Others still, are more concerned with whether or not the ERP solution can further support a CRM system that can leverage ERP data in a single repository to support the sales and marketing function associated with servicing customers.

With considerations coming from various stakeholders in your organization, it is important to have representation from your entire organization when deciding on ERP. The first step to adopting an ERP solution is to assemble a team of experts from across each of your business units. This team will be tasked with creating an outline of what business processes will be needed in the chosen ERP solution. Pooling together key stakeholders including managers or employees that are intrinsic to a particular process in your organization including accounting and finance, purchasing and operations, inventory and distribution, and reporting it is possible to obtain feedback you can ensure is taken into account for determining the most suitable ERP solution for your organization. 

Check back in the weeks to come for additional articles that delve into more detail about other considerations businesses should take into account when deciding to adopt an ERP solution. For a short list of considerations, take a moment to read the previous article Vison33 article Do I Need a New ERP Solution?