How an ERP Software can help you meet your Strategic Objective

Does ERP benefit an organization by helping achieve its strategic objectives? Or is it merely an operational tool? This article seeks to address how a well implemented ERP system can evolve from being an operational tool to being a key driver of business objectives.

For years, ERP Software has been sold to CEOs on two main premises. One, that it will help the company become an integrated whole, as opposed to being a collection of individual departments, or functions or locations. Second, that an ERP system will bring the best business practices that are embedded in the way the ERP software operates to the organization, and those business practices will become the basis for the future growth of the organization.

Both these statements are true to a very large extent, however, it is not a case of either-or.

An ERP, by definition, provides automation for all departments/functions of an organization. Thus, Sales and Marketing will be able to run their operations on the ERP system, and so will Material Management, Finance and Accounts, Retail and Distribution, Production, and so on. It is not as if these functions did not have any automation prior to the ERP implementation, just that after the implementation they share the same data seamlessly, information flow across functions and locations is enabled and process driven. Thus ERP benefits the organizations by enabling organization integration, islands or silos of information get eliminated and everyone is able to work on mutually shared objectives.