Friday, April 19, 2013

Enterprise Resource Planning - How ERP Systems Can Help Your Business


Businesses are constantly looking for ways to streamline their processes. The ability to unite the data from a range of business departments can work wonders in helping you plan your business processes going forward. Luckily, with the advances in computer technology this ability has become a reality. This article will highlight how ERP systems can help you plan your business.

Finance and accounting
One of the most important business areas to monitor is the finance department. You want to ensure you have a good overview of all the payments made to and from your business. ERP allows you to keep on top of your budgeting, cash management, receivables, payables, and more.

Customer relationship management
Probably the second most important consideration is the management of your customer relationships. After all, it is you customers that make your business what it is. With a good ERP system, you will be able to effortlessly manage your customer care and customer service strategies, as well as have a detailed insight into your sales and marketing strategies.

Manufacturing
Knowing exactly what goes into your manufacturing processes in terms of time and money will help you effectively plan and price your projects. With enterprise resource planning you can easily monitor workflow, the engineering process, and all of the associated costs that go into the manufacturing process.

Project management
As with manufacturing, knowing how your business currently handles its project management gives you a great insight into planning better strategies for the future. ERP systems allow you to keep an eye on all areas of project management, from the overall time taken through to all of the costing and billing associated with a particular project.

Human resources
Without efficient monitoring, your human resources department can eat unnecessary chunks out of your budget. By having an ERP system in place, you'll be able to monitor all of your HR processes, including training, recruitment, and payroll. You can use this data to help you plan your HR activity for the future.

Supply chain management
A good ERP system will allow you to keep an eye on all of those activities that happen around your business too. You can check up on purchasing, supplier scheduling, commissions, and all of your orders, helping you find ways to reduce your supply chain costs.

Access control and customisability
Finally, you can use enterprise resource planning systems to fully tailor your business processes. You can control who can access certain data sets and you can even use external programming companies to tweak your ERP so that it is in line with all of your business activities.

No comments:

Post a Comment