Is your ERP system killing your business? PART II

People buy ERP systems to enhance their organization’s performance. So why does it sometimes seems the opposite happens? Is your ERP system killing your business?Systems get more complex, require more work than they save, and actually hide data instead of bringing it to the forefront. Systems need to adapt to an organization’s changing requirements, not get in the way. This is the second of two articles on deciding whether you have a problem with your ERP system.

1. Mission-critical information can’t be integrated into the system – if you find yourselves trying to run several systems that should be talking to each other; you are not able to take advantage of the true power of integrated system.
2. Changes to the system are costly and take forever – your business changes and your system needs to keep up. This inevitably requires modification of your ERP system unless you want to consign it to the scrap heap in a few years. If this process is prohibitively expensive and takes too long to have changes implemented, you may miss business opportunities and possible processing inefficiencies.
3. The Internet is a dirty word – many of your key stakeholders either travel extensively or are located in other places than your head office. The Internet has many ways of offering information and processing capabilities to these distributed employees. If you are missing out on these opportunities, it is hurting your business.
4. Trading partners can’t interact with your system – the world is a global market and it is shrinking. Suppliers and customers could be anywhere and need to be integrated into your system. The cost of manual processes is both costly and is a detriment to customer service.

If your management information system is exhibiting any of these systems, you might want to consider a review of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, formerly Navision, and see what the most populate mid-market ERP system in the world has to offer.