Enterprise Resource Planning software has become a requisite for any organization may it be a small retail shop, local business across the street or a software company or an MNC located in high tech cities of the world. There are numerous ERP software programs for all business types you can think of like retail, aerospace, telecom, manufacturing, trading, marine etc. It is a business optimization tool which bridges the gap between various functionalities of an organization along with the external entities.
While this is purely a technical solution for an enterprise it is a common myth that an ERP software is more appropriate for big MNCs because they usually outsource huge volumes of work or involve technical complexities; or because they work round the clock and it might be tedious to keep track of all the transactions manually. Today’s businessmen have realized the importance of using such software to handle the critical data, be it for a small business in your neighborhood or a well established MNC.
Let us discuss a simple example and comprehend this better.
Consider a grocery shop where hundreds of customers drop in everyday to buy different products. Few years ago, when this kind of software was just an option, it was mandatory to maintain ledgers and registers to watch their business. It was indeed a tedious task to manually write down daily transactions like sales, purchases, returns, exchanges, items rejected, receipts, invoices etc and understand the historic data at a later stage. But in today’s scenario, any small outlet has such software which has replaced the laborious tasks of maintaining registers and ledgers making everyone’s life easy.
Now, let us see a simple MNC scenario to understand the role of ERP software and its benefits. On a daily basis, an employee is expected to be available at work for 8 hours. Out of the 8 hours, he must be productive for 7 hours, and can utilize 1 hour for recreation. While the employee logs in, the attendance details would be captured and accessed by the HR department. As he logs in, his productive hours are calculated and the details would be captured by the respective team leader or supervisor. While he leaves for the day, the data of his total work hours is captured and sent to the HR and operational departments. During the year end, his details will be sent to the Finance department for company’s budgeting process.
In both the above scenarios, you can observe that every entity (product/employee) has to be managed by different departments to complete one transactional cycle. Manually doing it might take months of time, while the ERP software can provide you all the details within seconds. All the details you require to make effective decisions are just a click away from you, whether you run your business in one location or many. With so much popularity across all business sectors, the IT service providers are also geared up to go an extra mile and develop tailor made, industry specific and high end software for the clients.
I am sure these two examples have cleared the myth off your mind that ERP software is meant only for large MNCs. So without a second thought, if you find yourself outdated by not using such software for your business, its time you consult an ERP expert to identify the best one for you.
