What is an ERP solution?
Enterprise Resource Planning, generally known as an ERP is an integrated business management solution that integrates all major business processes including finance and operations, manufacturing, supply chain management, human resource management, along with reporting functionalities.
Why there is a need for an ERP solution?
In the past years, most companies used to install any automated software for accounting and finance and separate software systems to automate daily-based business activities.
With evolving technology integrating with the business, there is the need of an ERP solution which can not only manage an organization’s finance and accounting but also efficiently manages other day to day activities like human resource, commerce, supply chain, and manufacturing.
Once a company starts expanding or changing requirements, the systems should also keep up with the growing business needs. That’s where an ERP solution comes to the rescue.
What does an ERP contain?
ERP software system is a unified solution with modules such as warehouse and inventory management, supply chain management, customer relationship management (CRM), financials, product lifecycle management, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, sales, and marketing.
If you deploy a single ERP in your business, you will not need any other system to automate and manage any of your business processes because a single ERP will cater to all your business needs.
Major ERP Modules
- Financial Management
The financial management module will let you automate all finance, supply chain, inventory, purchasing, warehouse, and sales processes. It will monitor and manage all the financial data of your business, such as costs, budgets, accounts payable, and receivables, along with forecasting.
This module will let you increase profitability by giving real-time business insights and accurate reports, minimize the costs, and improving the cash flow.
- Business Intelligence
ERP solutions contain business intelligence (BI) features to analyze your data and then provide you actionable insights based on real-time data. You can monitor your business data based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and real-time dashboards and reports.
- Customer Relationship Management
ERP system includes Customer Relationship Management to enhance the customer relationship by observing customer behavior deeply and have a better understanding of customer needs and preferences. You can track your customer data and analyze it before making sales and marketing strategies. It will eventually boost the sales by suggesting new cross-selling and up-selling opportunities and enhance business growth.
How an ERP can transform your major business processes?
ERP is the only solution that brings together all business processes under one solution, to improve collaboration across the business, reduce effort, and saves time and cost. It will allow a business to make intelligent, data-driven business decisions based on real-time insights. These are some of the major processes that an ERP will manage and enhance business productivity.
- Supply Chain Management
The supply chain management module will help a business to manage the flow of product items and streamline the demand and supply management, shipping and transportation tracking, sales returns, and replacing process. You can also perform inventory management by using real-time dashboards and built-in business intelligence tools to manage and track the inventory present in your warehouse.
- Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management module in an ERP solution will manage and automate all human resource data. It will streamline the employee management task such as payroll management, attendance, hiring, and other day-to-day HR activities. It will let you track employee performance and make decisions based on data-driven results.
- Finance management
In an ERP solution, you will get an overview of your business finances, where you can look for specific information anytime in any module. It will also minimize the business cost, by automating daily based business tasks and track business data.
- Manufacturing
Another major module about an ERP solution is manufacturing the allows the manufacturers to efficiently manage their resources and fulfill customer’s requirements using real-time data. This will eventually help the manufacturer to perform production using real-time data as well as optimize cost and project management.
Top 10 ERP vendors
Although there are multiple ERP solutions present in the industry with more or less the same features, here are the top ten ERP vendors to fulfill your business needs
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- Oracle
- SAP
- Odoo
- Epicor
- Infror
- IFS
- Acumatica
- Sys Pro
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Conclusion
ERP in Pakistan is becoming the best choice for SMBs to large organizations as a unified solution for process automation. An ERP solution will efficiently manage all major business processes in a single solution.
There are multiple ERP solutions available in the market, where you can choose an ERP solution based on your organization’s size and business requirements and then customize your ERP solution. Look for an ERP solution that includes the functionalities required for your business and then choose an ERP vendor that provides consultation, deployment, and support for an ERP.