One of the common debates that often come up while deciding on business strategies is that of ERP deployment. For small and mid-size businesses moving up the ladder, the debate grows stronger as they majorly rely on spreadsheets. For companies that have never used the ERP software, different functions like sales, marketing, human resources, manufacturing, invoicing, etc. are performed using multiple software. But, as the businesses evolve, having multiple systems for the processes leads to loss of time and lack of comprehensive management. Moreover, it results in unnecessary consolidation effort, data redundancy, and even errors on the part of the IT team. Since these companies do not have comprehensive software, a lot of important information stays at bay from employees which results in ineffective decisions. This knowledge gap often impacts customer experiences directly or indirectly.
To deal with these everyday business challenges, an ERP system that can meet industry-specific needs becomes important. One such software is SAP S/4HANA which is SAP’s 4th ERP suite. It runs on SAP HANA, an in-memory database that can transform businesses through a simplified data model and intelligent automation.
How ERP Handles Daily Business Challenges?
1. Standardization
An ERP system can standardize various processes of the organization by bringing them together with a comprehensive interface. With this, management can have a birds-eye view of all the processes which enhances control and data security. In addition, managing large data sets is an expensive deal, and so companies try to reduce the data storage footprint.
SAP S/4 HANA can help reduce data footprint quite a bit, with highly compressed data and fewer tables. With it, organizations do not need to maintain separate legacy systems. Lower-cost disk storage can be used for storing historical data within one SAP HANA database.
2. Data Centralization
The database is fully centralized with an ERP- if some data is fed in one of the modules, the data in other modules get automatically updated in real-time. It cuts down the effort of the employees and chances of duplicity. Since it leaves no room for guesswork, decision-making capabilities are improved substantially.
SAP S/4 HANA in particular, can help companies with real-time insights into data. It helps in overcoming the conventional barriers of database and simplifies IT landscapes by eliminating preparation of data, pre-aggregation, and database tuning. It allows having instant access to structured and unstructured data from different sources.
3. Analytics and Reporting
Data centralization assists data analytics and reporting. Since the data with an ERP is readily available and keeps getting updated automatically, it becomes possible to perform analysis and generate reports within minutes which otherwise could take days and still lack accuracy.
Companies can do real-time analysis with SAP S/4 HANA as a result of its embedded analytics. It helps with operational reporting on live data and helps with quick modelling of queries.
4. Maintaining Compliance
It is quite a job to keep a manual track of legal and regulatory compliance using spreadsheets. Slight human error in this regard can lead to extensive damages including the closure of business. Companies need to keep a track of all the compliance guidelines starting from acquiring raw materials to delivering the final product.
With SAP S/4 HANA, it is easy to manage legal and regulatory compliance, classify the products, create documents and reports of compliance, as well as do accurate labelling while storing or transporting hazardous materials.
5. Inventory Management
ERP provides businesses with accurate inventory data. With the help of ERP inventory management systems, companies can have control over their logistics and inventory. It helps in planning the replenishment orders with the right quantity. In a nutshell, when a customer raises a demand, ERP can help the salespeople by letting them quickly check the inventory, which otherwise would involve communication with the inventory and production department.
The warehouse functionality of SAP has evolved over the years. The current warehouse management feature in the cloud S/4 HANA covers inbound and outbound processes along with all the internal processes. Management can have a complete view of the warehouse i.e., the storage location of the products, count of the material, movement of the goods within the warehouse, processing incoming material, and shipping the products from the warehouse.
6. Well-Organized Production
An ERP can help manufacturing companies plan accurate production. Every time a production order is fed into the system, an intelligent ERP takes into consideration the time needed for unit production, machine capacity, and availability of material.
With an intelligent ERP like SAP S/4 HANA, manufacturing companies can manage the Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) process in real-time. This reduces the manufacturing cycle time and increases the coherence of manufacturing-related functions. It also helps with automating backorder processes and at the same time enhances the transparency of material flow.
Conclusion
With intelligent ERP software, the productivity of the employees can be increased multi-fold as most of the tedious tasks like data entry, report generation, order processing, inventory management, and regulatory compliance get automated. This time could instead be used for other thoughtful and productive activities. In the light of this information, the choice of ERP becomes crucial. With the largest installed base and continuous improvement and induction of the latest in technology SAP S/4HANA is the right solution for organizations.
To implement SAP S/4HANA in your business and create a success story, you must have an experienced technology partner. Gloitt, with a track record of 27 years in delivering software solutions, has the expertise and experience to optimize and implement SAP solutions in a way that minimizes risk and increases efficiency. Gloitt has got refined expertise that spans over 14 industries and has a client base of 900+. Thus, SAP and Gloitt together are the right combination for your business journey towards becoming an intelligent enterprise.