ERP success in India – Success of ERP performance is directly proportional to the adherence to standard operating procedures. However, we find that very common complaint against ERP is its rigid structure and disciplined standard operating procedures. Often there are ridiculous demands and expectations from users, which are conflicting with standard operating procedures. Hence ERP is either blamed or made to fail. When the user says he wants flexibility in ERP, actually he wants the official allowance to deviate from standards set for value generation. The repercussions of such flexibility are tremendous, including the loss of value.
For example, here goes a typical style of customer negotiations. The sales people of a manufacturing company arbitrarily fixed unit price and raised sales orders against customers. After physical material dispatches, suddenly the customer started negotiating with sales and the rates were changed. The sales person then wanted to pass these entries in ERP. No good system will support such incongruous requirements. Here, the user wants flexibility in addressing these issues from ERP and also expected that everything should happen automatically. To settle and account for such changes, one has to pass a number of reverse entries in ERP.
Unfortunately, some consulting companies charge extra from clients for automating such absurd provisions. The same thing happened with the above company also and they landed up with ‘auto reverse entry module’ supporting the existing system. More ironically, this feature of ERP soon became so popular that the company asked a similar module for purchase transactions. The ultimate chaos is always observed in finance and costing modules where multiple figures of profits, inventory values, sales income, taxes, etc. linked to the same transaction are found. Nobody could really gather any meaningful information from such sets of data over a period of time. At the end the user gets flexibility and the organization gets punishment.
There are also some cases where flexibility going to the extent of unethical business practices and in such cases illegal transactions can also be carried out.
Here is one peculiar requirement that once observed from a user. He asked for various options of selecting report sizes (A3 or A4) to use with different printers for printing the same reports. ERP was expected to be flexible enough to accommodate multiple report sizes based on printer selection. The same user never used in his earlier tenure any computerized output and did not even know how to load paper into printer.
The major flexibility expected by Indian ERP users can be summarized as “I want to do transactions any way, later on it should get corrected.” Hence we find demand of provisional entries, temporary databases, notional requirements, etc. The fundamental principle of ERP is doing right things right at first time is not understood and deviations are expected to be regularized. We find many of such cases, ultimately making ERP as unused ornament lying in the bank locker.
ERP system more than a sales solution – ERP is no longer just a competitive advantage. It is an important requirement for every enterprise. It has been undoubtedly proved that ERP is completely necessary to deal with businesses in every nook and corner of the market. ERP just does not work in only one way. It gets to focus on all the relevant aspects that decision makers need to take into account when they are facing important decisions.
In today’s hypercompetitive markets, small and midsize companies are faced with ever-growing challenges and they could overcome these challenges if only they are fully prepared. Business enterprises must be occupied with the infrastructure, whether it is in the form of man power strength or the software system, which could streamline and handle the workload successfully and help deliver the result in a desired manner.
It is also important that to keep pace with the rivals in the field every organization need to make some smart moves to take their business ahead and help yield a pre-conceived profit. A good resource planning system required to support any smart move to make the desired results.
Therefore it is entirely wrong to classify ERP system as sales solution software. It is much more than that.
Is ERP suitable for only big companies? – This is one of the main misconceptions prevailing among some small and medium sized companies. This is due to the unawareness of the functioning of an ERP system. Mainly what is to be understood is that an ERP system automates business processes across an organization and thus eliminates inefficiency caused by a legacy system.
It is true that there are some big players like SAP in the market that may be taking care of business process of huge organizations. But today, medium and small sized companies are benefited from automation and streamlining of their business process with efficient and affordable web-based ERP solutions like eresource. Both SAP and eresource are ERP systems and designed for large, small and medium sized organizations across every industry.
eresource ERP for process industry provides all support for food industry. Client who would like to have detailed information on this subject can contact us with their specific requirements.
eresource ERP for process industry has been developed with various industries like Pharmaceuticals, chemicals, Food and Beverages etc. in mind. An effective ERP system should address every aspect of your business. eresource ERP for process manufacturing industry helps to cut costs, enables quick market presence of the product, improve customer relation and comply with regulations.
It also important that process industry ERP must be equipped with a good quality control module integrated. eresource ERP has been designed in unique style and it helps Quality Control department with its integrated sophisticated Quality Control / Module which not only monitors quality by control plans in purchasing and production but also provides real-time process capability index for quick review.
In eresource process industry ERP system, factory floor is always on the focus, specifically on the operator/user who is the most intelligent agent in a process environment. With eresource ERP system implemented, automatic data capture provides real-time updates to your inventory, improving the speed, ease, and accuracy of data capture. Each operator/user is connected through the ERP system, to everyone else in the plant floor, and to all plant floors within the organization. This operations-centric process environment-where information is shared within and between plants and planning in real time – is truly the efficient supply chain.
Is CRM part of ERP or a separate business software category? – Both. As a unique category, CRM normally consists of sales force automation, marketing automation and customer support. As part of ERP, CRM is one of the five ERP pillars, with the other four pillars being financial accounting, distribution or supply chain management, manufacturing and human resources/payroll.
CRM can be described as the development and implementation of a strategy for handling interactions with past, existing or future customers. It covers all customer-oriented activities from potential market identification through to customer loyalty retention. It is technology enabled and involves data capture and analysis, information generation and distribution, and customer-oriented activity. CRM has a central database and integrates with an ERP system and different channels of interaction. CRM involves different participants and has the ability to manage these participants.
Email sales@eresourceinfotech.com or Click here for free ERP Software Demo!
The introduction of Information Technology, especially enterprise systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, is a common way of implementing organizational change today. Such enterprise system implementations frequently come with new software systems and business processes that substantially alter workflow and jobs.
While the annual investment of several millions of rupees in ERP systems is staggering, estimates indicate that there could be chances of failures in implemented systems and such failures have been observed even in highly successful organizations.
Organizations that successfully implement ERP systems, including new software and business processes, have reported enormous benefits, such as greater efficiency and effectiveness at the individual employee and organizational levels.
One of the primary causes of failure is the inability of managers to effectively manage the change process. Managers frequently fail to consider the organizational environment and culture relying, instead, on success stories of some organizations that used a big-bang strategy, an implementation strategy in which all modules of an ERP system are implemented simultaneously and in a short period time, to manage their own change.
The result can be catastrophic for firms, with consequences up to and including going out of business as a result of a failed ERP implementation.
Given this backdrop, it is important to teach diverse aspects of ERP implementations to make today’s information systems and business management curricula relevant to organizational practice.
Yet, the effective integration of ERP related knowledge into curricula continues to be a challenge with some suggesting that relevant knowledge should be imparted in a wide range of classes. Of the many areas related to ERP systems, the ability of students to understand that different strategies of ERP implementation may be necessary in different scenarios is an important one, especially for those who may go on to manage such implementations.
A “one-medicine-does-not-cure-all-ailments” argument goes well with when it comes to ERP implementation strategies.
Yet, mistakes and failures continue. Sorely needed is a teaching approach that can open the eyes of managers, present and future, to the different strategies to ERP success, and when a particular strategy is appropriate.
With a good teaching approach with minimum three cases of examples could help the student identify the areas where a failure is bound to happen and may rectify it. It is also a must that each student is assigned to read only one of the three cases, lessening the total workload, but the students understand the differences in approaches and successes of ERP implementations related to all three cases.
Though it is practically possible to purchase resource ERP modules individually, technically it is not advisable. This is because many of the modules are integrated functionally and must be purchased together.
Keeping in mind the requirements of customers, eresource has recently introduced a novel system by providing the client only the modules what they required. This new package allows the customer to choose an ERP system with modules required for them. By purchasing this filtered ERP modules organizations will able to implement an ERP system within their limited budget and their employees can enjoy working in a comfortable environment of an ERP system.
Audit in ERP – ERP systems typically provide elegant technological solutions for organizations information needs through radical changes in information processing orientation. Due to the robust nature of these applications and the changes associated with the implementation, auditors may need to adjust the audit processes and procedures when auditing in such an environment.
As you know the ERP systems facilitate horizontal and vertical integration of business processes across an organization. When an ERP system if successfully implemented, can enable companies to better manage supply chains, perform business reengineering and reorganize their accounting processes along with different other functions. In addition, currently the ERP systems are becoming a necessary tool for companies to remain competitive in this new business environment rather than constituting a new strategic move.
It is also a fact that the changes from the legacy system made the auditors are faced with the daunting task of auditing in a new ERP. Some ERP systems implementations initially in some companies has lead to increased audit related risk due to automated inter-dependencies among business processes, and integrated relational database. As technological developments continued, auditors also expanded their technological knowledge and skills in order to perform effectively and efficiently in audit functions in an ERP environment.
ERP Finance Module – In our Finance Resource Management module, transactions require document attachments before posting. This would ensure that there are no backlogs for documentation. For the auditor, the documents will be displayed on click of a button to review a transaction.
In addition, eresource ERP’s financial accounting provides company-wide integration that is essential to strategic decision making. The financial accounting module in eresource ERP gives you the ability to centrally track financial accounting data within a single framework, of multiple companies, multiple branches and chart of accounts.
The eresource ERP CRM module helps you know your customer better and includes many features such as activities, history, related contacts, addresses of your customers and their relations with your competitors. The flexible database structures enables you whatever information you would like to keep on your customer and maintains such information for your future reference.
The eresource ERP CRM module also facilitates control and organization of entire sales process, from offer to invoice. It empowers your sales staff by providing details such as inventory status, estimated costs and delivery time, risk status, habits and special demands, and previous trades during offer stage.
The eresource ERP Customer Relationship Management Module offers an effective customer complaint management tool which also includes repairs processing and document management.
