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The value of ERP in driving business growth and innovation

The value of ERP in driving business growth and innovation
Published on 24th June 2022

As many organisations are increasingly recognising, the value of ERP systems in driving growth and innovation cannot be underestimated. Success in the modern business landscape requires speed and agility to respond to changing market conditions and digital disruption. With cloud ERP, organisations are able to digitise their core processes and introduce market-leading operational efficiencies across their front and back offices, supply chains, and IT infrastructure.

So, let’s explore the value of ERP in helping your organisation solve complex business problems and seize emerging opportunities. But first, a little refresher on cloud ERP.

What is cloud ERP?

A cloud ERP platform stores company-wide information in a single database, ensuring information is current across functions such as accounting, project management, procurement, risk and compliance, and supply-chain operations. It also includes performance management capabilities to help you plan, budget, predict and report on financial results. The cross-functional flow of information continuously updates your data in real-time, ensuring you know what is happening in every department, at any given time. And while ERP was once the sole domain of larger enterprises, smaller growth-minded businesses are increasingly finding value in the cloud ERP model too.

How cloud ERP delivers value

1. Automating processes for greater efficiencies

The value of ERP really comes into play when companies capitalise on new digital capabilities to unburden staff from administrative tasks. Enter automation: the fastest way to remove the need for repetitive tasks and workflows and create more efficient processes. For example, you can leverage the automation capabilities of ERP to support invoice processing, payment runs, report processing, revenue forecasting, allocation, recognition, reclassification, and auditing – the list goes on.

2. Inventory management and forecasting

With cloud ERP, manual inventory management and reconciliation are replaced with a system that fully integrates inventory management with back-office and accounting processes. Users can then manage stock levels at multiple locations by setting minimum and maximum levels, calculating expected demand for products, and even prompting a re-order based on sales forecasts. This real-time visibility ensures you will always know what inventory is on-hand and whether you are able to fulfil orders, as well as gain insights that will inform your future planning.

3. Integration to support growth and change

A cloud ERP wouldn’t be much use if it couldn’t integrate with your current or future systems. Fortunately, there are cloud ERP platforms that are built on innovative, standards-based architectures, making them easy to extend, integrate, maintain, and scale. For example, NetSuite’s native extensibility provides an ecosystem of applications with which you can readily integrate. From pre-built integrations with third-party platforms as diverse as CRMs (Salesforce), eCommerce (Shopify), point-of-sale solutions (Vend) and banks (NAB and ANZ) through to a range of NetSuite apps to extend functionality around particular use cases. By providing a platform that can flex and grow with your business needs, you can fully realise the value of ERP across your organisation’s lifecycle.

4. Strengthened customer relationships

Today’s customers demand seamless experiences tailored to their interests and preferences, as well as consistent, timely, and personalised communications. Beyond this, they expect your sales and customer service staff to have real-time access to their purchase and interaction history to support their journey. In short, they want a data-driven experience. A cloud ERP can help you achieve this by natively integrating front-end customer-facing systems with back-end business systems, creating a single source of customer, order, and inventory data that can be used to accurately feed every customer touchpoint.

5. The power of a single source of truth

With a unified system delivering a single view of truth across the organisation, you can minimise errors and ensure your team always has access to up-to-date and accurate information. Plus, business leaders will have access to an integrated view of financials, sales, customers, projects, and processes data, providing them with the information they need for real-time analysis and informed decision-making – no more guesses or gut instincts.

6. A quantifiable contribution to ROI

The value of ERP is undeniable. But how do ERP functions directly translate to ROI? After all, deploying a cloud ERP requires a significant upfront investment. A Forrester report set out to quantify the benefits of implementing cloud ERP system NetSuite. By gathering data from customer interviews, they found that an organisation could expect:

  • Finance reporting and management efficiencies contributing to more than US$408,000
  • Greater revenue enabling a new operating margin of more than US$1.2 million from more and larger sales.
  • IT savings of almost US$749,000, including the retirement of obsolete servers, applications, and services

Cloud ERP allows the free flow of information across an organisation to inform better decision-making, eliminate costly and time-consuming tasks with automation, drive efficiencies to enable positive ROI, and provide the business with the infrastructure to grow. The value of ERP is clear, so if your organisation has yet to shift to a cloud ERP solution, it might be time to explore the benefits you could receive from investing in this technology.

More than just NetSuite experts

At Annexa, we provide industry-leading solutions customised to the NetSuite platform, including supply chain management. With our in-house integrations, extensions, partnerships, and full-service capabilities, we deliver end-to-end solutions for our customers to help them grow and expand their business potential. Contact us today to speak to an expert to learn whether we are the right NetSuite implementation partner for you.

Annexa is a leading NetSuite partner with extensive experience designing and implementing comprehensive and customised business systems, including payroll solutions, financial management, warehouse management, and ecommerce solutions.

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