BITSoftware / Blog

Business applications like ERP are undergoing many changes. The realities of cloud computing, the accessibility provided by mobile technologies and the impact of social media are all affecting the business application environment. Market research conducted by some of the most important companies in the field have shown which are the managers’ expectations from ERP systems for 2012 and beyond. Here are some of the highly anticipated predictions for 2012:

ERP will become mobile. Bringing greater ERP mobility from the shop floor to the sales call will increasingly be seen as a means to lessen the time crunch. 2012 is the year where mobility gets real across the enterprise with solid performance numbers being generated as a result. Integration on mobile devices, including tablets, will emerge as the new enterprise bling. The expectations are very high for having real-time updates on a series of benchmarks that the management team uses to manage their many businesses on mobile platforms. As Gartner`s experts predicts, by 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.

Rapid implementations become the new normal. Accuracy, speed and quickness with perfect implementations are what the new expectations are based on. ERP implementation timeframes will drastically shrink in 2012, with greater pressure on system integrators and professional services to meet or beat deadlines.

Less „do it yourself” ERP projects. CIOs and CFOs are becoming smart and risk adverse enough to know better than to try this approach when it comes to transforming their entire business with a new ERP system. They will try to reduce their pure technical skills and will try to get their groups to be business focussed. These companies will lean on outside consultants and experts more than they have in recent years.

Cloud-based ERP will continue to gain ground at the expense of traditional ERP. Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors have successfully gained smaller customers from the traditional ERP vendors over the last few years, but in 2012 they will start making broader in-roads among mid-size companies. Enterprises will continue to adopt SaaS-based applications to replace legacy, high-maintenance and often marginally effective systems in use today. Accordind to Gartner, by 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15% of top outsourcing players’ revenue.

Convergence of CRM and social media. Industry analysts have been talking about it and software developers have been working on it for years, but next year is when we will finally start to see some meaningful integration between the “enterprise” side of CRM and the “social” side of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, in order to allow organizations to better manage internal customer relationship functions in tandem with the external and less structured social media functions. To have ERP, CRM and Social Media as three separate systems makes no sense, particularly in industries where consumer interaction in key. A „stock-out” used to be a lost opportunity, with social media it can quickly become a big issue. A company needs to be agile to its customer demand, so that the ties between ERP and Social Media will be more tighten. In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014, said Gartner.

Template-driven implementations will become more commonplace in the mid-market. Template-driven implementations will also become commonplace in cloud-based ERP systems and solution packages sold to vertical market industries. These templates will be especially useful in industries where compliance is critical to passing government audits, for example in the food industry.

As bottom line, in 2012 the enterprises will be in search of systems that will help reduce the time shortages that nearly every one of them is facing today.

Food producers must find ways to satisfy customers and operate profitably despite fluctuations in consumer demand, varying raw material variability and capacity constraints. And, above all, must comply to strict government and European Union regulations regarding the traceability process and products quality. That means the need of controlling the history of a food product, from raw material until the final product and its location after sale or distribution. And those EU regulations on products quality must be complied by any European food manufacturers, no matter what size the food company is. But are the Romanian food producers prepared to fulfill the EU regulations? Are they able to track the raw materials sources, the processing of those materials, and the products lots on batch?

 As I already said in an old post, less than half of Romanian food companies bought a software to control the production process. The management of those companies understood that they must invest in some business management solutions dedicated to food industry, to increasingly shorten the time to access information and to reduce operational costs.

 The rest do not understand or do not know why they should purchase and implement an ERP solution. Therefore, I will highlight just some of the benefits that an integrated business management solution will brings to a food manufacturers:

• having a real-time access to all information related to raw materials entering into the product recipe, allowing you to identifying compromised lots. How that will help you? In case of any contamination, you will have to withdraw only contaminated products from the market and not the entire production, with a dramatic impact on your profitability.
• optimizing the procurement processes depending on the quantities required in the production process. So you will reduce the acquisition and storage costs and planning production shifts to maximize capacity.
• providing control and predictability to produce the highest quality products, with direct effects on customer satisfaction.

 Our ERP solution, Socrate+, is able to provide tracking capabilities and production management, so that managing the entire flow of preparation, programming, launching, tracking and controlling production is a much more effective activity. Standard processes are documented, and operations and results are tracked to support your detailed reporting requirements.  The solution, already used by some food and beverage companies, help you to comply with safety requirements, track food lots and shelf life, help price commodities and promotional incentives, and run efficient streamlined processes, giving you the competitive edge.