For every Thanksgiving dinner, you need, at the very least, the basics. It wouldn’t really be Thanksgiving without stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie and, of course, the turkey. It’s more than welcome to add some extra foods to the feast, but the minimum you need at every Thanksgiving meal are the main components.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is much the same. Your ERP system can be jam-packed with innovative and intuitive features, but if it doesn’t have one of the main components, it’s simply not worth it. So while you’re evaluating ERP vendors, make sure that they have each of the six main ERP components. And if they don’t, look elsewhere.
Managing your employees should always be priority number one. Without them, you don’t have a company. Your HR ERP component should be able to handle the full spectrum of employee management, from onboarding to off boarding, and from benefits administration to timekeeping.
The biggest feature you need from an HR component is payroll software. Manually submitting payroll and issuing direct deposits is incredibly time-consuming and, frankly, not worth your time. Instead, an HR component automates payments, including tax and benefits deductions. With an integrated timekeeping feature, even payments to your hourly workers can be automated, so you don’t need to manually input their timesheets.
Managing your customers and leads needs to be your second highest priority, because, without them, your business can’t survive, let alone grow. A customer relationship supervision (CRM) ERP component allows you to keep track of all of your customer and lead data within your ERP solution. The insights you can gain from a CRM help optimize your marketing and sales efforts.
One of the main uses of a CRM is tracking the buyer histories of your customers. With this data in hand, you can suggest additional purchases through cross-selling or upselling, or try to sell them a relevant product/service when they’re otherwise not as likely to buy. In addition, you can use a CRM to track the conversation history with leads, so you know who’s talked to them, when they talked and what they talked about. Using this data, you can more effectively lead them down the sales funnel by providing them with appropriate marketing materials and making sure that sales reps never double-up by calling about the same thing.
Business intelligence (BI) is pretty new. At least, it is when it comes to standard ERP components. But considering how many businesses are attempting to create data-driven administrative processes, it’s quickly become one of the standard ERP components. The BI component of your ERP software collects and analyzes data, provided that you with actionable insights related to your business processes.
The best BI ERP components deliver those insights in reports. A good reporting feature is the most important in a BI, so you can make sense of the data is analyzed. Some reports come in the form of figures in different tables. But the best intelligence are visual, allowing you to spot trends at a glance. Make sure that data visualization is possible with the BI components’ reporting features. Otherwise, those insights will be a lot harder to decipher.
Creating an efficient supply chain isn’t exactly easy, even when deploying software to help you out. The supply chain supervision (SCM) section of an ERP system is one of the most crucial for this reason. You need the best SCM features to be able to optimize your supply chain, and that starts by collecting real-time data.
Real-time data allows you to keep tabs on your supply chain, so you can find and fix issues as they happen, rather than waiting until you receive the data a day or more after the fact. It also makes predictive analytics possible. The SCM component, with the aid of real-time data, can help with stipulate planning, so you can create an up-to-the-minute accurate production plan that meets demand, but doesn’t exceed it.