Role of ERP Software Development Behind Business Growth

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have become crucial for businesses to thrive in today’s competitive digital world. This customized software solution allows corporations to streamline operations, increase productivity, and minimize errors. According to a report from Grand View Research, the ERP software market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11% and extend to $123.41 billion by 2030.

However, if you are considering investing in a customized ERP system for your business, you must understand how it can benefit your business. Therefore, to help you out, we will share everything from the definition of ERP to its features and how it can contribute to the growth of your business.

Understanding ERP Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solutions refer to the business applications used by organizations to manage and automate business processes while providing internal controls and insights to make informed decisions. These business processes include accounting, project management, procurement, risk management, supply chain management, manufacturing, sales, analytics, order management, order processing, and more. With ERP systems, businesses can predict, budget, and report financial information.

Furthermore, ERP systems allow businesses to centralize their data and integrate their processes, which helps to break down silos that may exist within the organization and fosters a more cohesive and integrated approach to business management. By improving operational efficiency and providing strategic insights, ERP solutions enable organizations to enhance their agility and stay ahead of the competition.

Benefits of ERP Implementation

Implementing an ERP system is imperative in the current data-driven business landscape, where data significantly shapes operational decisions. With ERP, businesses can not only make informed decisions but also get a ton of benefits. Some of them are as follows:

• Data Centralization: One of the core benefits of an ERP solution is its ability to centralize different business processes to build an integrated and seamless operational framework. In simple terms, ERP systems bring heterogeneous functions and processes together for efficient and synchronized workflow. This makes data easily accessible across different departments, reduces data redundancy, minimizes errors, improves collaboration, ensures accuracy, and supports informed decision-making for continuous business growth.
• Operation Optimization: ERP systems improve operational optimization by automating repetitive, manual tasks, allowing employees to focus on more value-added and strategic processes. Apart from this, ERP also enables financial process streamlining, inventory cost reduction, stockout minimization, and more.
• Better Customer Relations: With so many businesses competing for customers, creating an exceptional customer experience that keeps them engaged with the company’s offerings and products has become essential. That’s where ERP comes into play. Having all the information from order history to customer behavior in one place, ERP facilitates a personalized customer experience by offering faster solutions and assistance.
  
• Scalability: ERP systems can grow with the changing business requirements. It allows businesses to use the functionalities they need now while leaving the gateway to add more features and capabilities open. 
• Data Security: Data is the crucial element that empowers the business to make an informed decision. However, with the advancement of technology, cyber threats are rapidly increasing. Therefore, ERP systems can improve data security by implementing the right authentication methods and limiting access to the data.

How to Know If You Need One?

Every business has different requirements and struggles with different challenges at different phases, so it can take time to decide whether or when your business requires an ERP system. To help you decide, we have listed some of the points that you can use to determine if it’s safe to start evaluating ERP development companies to hire developers and work on custom software solutions for your business.

• Your team is spending unnecessary time on repetitive tasks that can be easily automated.
• You’ve implemented multiple tools and processes that are not connected.
• You don’t have easy access to data to analyze it and make informed decisions.
• Your team or you spend too much time searching for ways or tools to boost operational efficiency and productivity.
• It is becoming increasingly difficult for your team to collaborate and share information.
• You need help keeping track of business processes and maintaining regulatory compliance.
• You are unable to address problems to keep running operations smoothly and proactively.
• Accounting and Financial reporting are now too time-consuming and tedious.
• You need help to meet customer demands.
• You don’t have insights into inventory management.

If you can check at least 4-6 signs from the above list, it’s time to explore ERP developers.

Current ERP Trends To Watch Out For

But before you move ahead with ERP development, learning the current trends to keep your business ahead of the competition is obligatory. Some key ERP trends you need to consider are as follows:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT): In the past few years, there has been a boost in the implementation and usage of AI and IoT within different businesses. While AI and machine learning (ML) work to automate business processes and improve user experiences through data analysis, IoT-enables devices like scanners, shipping trackers, smart security, sensors, smart healthcare monitors, and smart shelves can be used to collect data and track different activities within the organization to identify and fix problems before they cause havoc.

Therefore, empowering ERP with AI and IoT will remain the trend in the industry, leading to better data integrity for shaping actions and decisions.

Cloud Deployment: There will also be a boost in cloud ERP adoption in the upcoming years thanks to lower cost, simpler deployment, enhanced scalability, the need for fewer IT resources, elasticity to use required resources only, the ability to add users, and flexibility to integrate functions for business growth.

Two-Tier ERP: Two-tier ERP is a business concept that involves implementing two integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This approach is particularly useful for small and mid-sized companies with numerous subsidiaries. The concept of two-tier ERP has gained prominence due to the increasing demand for digital transformation and eCommerce. Nowadays, businesses need to be mobile and offer their products and services through the web to meet customer expectations. As a result, many companies are adopting two-tier ERP systems to improve their overall efficiency and accessibility.

Composable ERP: Another growing trend in the ERP market is Composable ERP. This ERP system allows companies to combine different software suites as required to overcome new challenges, address new opportunities, and reduce threats. Rather than focusing on rigid technology, composable ERP prioritizes business needs.

How to Hire an ERP Development Team?

A few key steps to consider while outsourcing an ERP development team for your enterprise are:

• Understanding Requirements: The first step towards searching for an ERP service provider is to understand and outline your business’s needs and requirements. For that, you must identify features, functionalities, third-party integrations, scalability plans, and modules that should be added to the ERP system.

• Research and Shortlist Potential Service Providers: After defining the requirements, the next step involves searching and shortlisting companies that provide outsourcing services for ERP development. For that, you can use freelancing websites, referrals, and industry-specific forums to learn about your expertise and experience as well as portfolio and case studies of previous projects completed by these companies.

• Evaluating Team’s Technical Proficiency: Once you have shortlisted the potential providers, the next step involves the development team’s technical skills, certifications, and experience. You should also ask how they handle complex integrations and legacy system upgrades.

• Inspecting Previous Ratings and Reviews: To verify the team’s efficiency, you should ask for references to previous clients’ projects they have worked on. You can review their clients’ reviews and ratings on platforms like Upwork, Google Business, and GoodFirms.

• Check Support and Maintenance: If you are satisfied with the reviews and ratings of the development team, inquire about the support and maintenance they offer after the project’s launch.

• Cost and Contractual Agreements: Once everything is finalized, request the proposals from the company, including project scope, deliverables, resources, timeline, tech stack, and cost. After overviewing the proposal, ask for clarity in contractual agreements before initiating the project.

Cost to Develop an ERP System

Although it’s impossible to give an accurate cost without knowing your requirements, the approximate cost to develop an ERP system can range anywhere from $18,000 to $300,000. Needless to say, the variation in this cost entirely depends on the ERP solutions’ complexity, size, required resources, and tech stack. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, ERP systems are here to stay and drive business growth by automating and streamlining operations. As you might have guessed, it offers much more than just process optimization; they are now an integral part of organizations across industries. With ERP, businesses can acquire a free flow of information and communication between different departments, increasing efficiency and synergies.

That being said, you can also add geo-location solutions to the ERP system to help analyze cross-geography ad-hoc sources of information and have accurate, real-time intimation of physical asset location to improve workers’ safety and security.