When it comes to globalization, competitiveness and quality in business processes, it is necessary for companies to have the need to efficiently integrate company resources and make their information flow continuously, and not just to accelerate processes, if not to reduce costs.
Organizations need a solution that is tailored to their needs, that grows as businesses grow and grows, and changes as businesses grow. The solution is to acquire business information systems which are: ERP (Business Resource Planning), which manages the internal business processes, optimizes the sales cycle times and costs in the value chain; CRM (Customer Relations Management), which attends to the relationship with customers, resolves the level of consistency of the service.
Companies that have ERP systems have the ability to change strategy, tactics and procedures according to the market situation. Other benefits are: The creation of a unified vision of business common to all departments and functions of the companies; centralized databases in which all functions of business activity are recorded, processed, monitored and controlled.
Some steps to follow for a successful implementation are:
- Clear definition of project scope and objectives Senior management sponsorship Strong project leadership, team spirit and user engagement Use and adhere to a methodology Realistic expectations Allow organizational redesign Change process management Advantages of implementing ERP
Having an efficient and complete transactional flow of information through the different areas of the company, business units and geographical areas means that there are even greater benefits, especially in terms of time and access to information.
The processes of strategic planning, human resource management, resource optimization, cost reduction, and customer and supplier service capacity benefit, in time and cost, from the management of integrated systems of this type.
Business processes are optimized and the ability to provide reliable, real-time information is increased.
Improvements in customer service and customer care, as well as greater competitiveness as there are changes in the environment.
Currently, companies that are successful when they implement these systems in their companies is because they have well-established goals and you have a pattern to follow, that is, they have well planned where they want to go and how they are going to achieve it, and for this it is necessary to take into account It has several factors such as the economic, the human factor, time and the cultural factor and above all it has real goals that are in accordance with reality, that is, they are not too difficult to achieve. Companies that implement these systems take great care in choosing the system that best suits them and that is in accordance with the size of the company so that it can easily adapt and work successfully.
However, some of these weaknesses that we can mention are the complexity of the process to integrate information contained in systems external to the ERP or in geographically distributed applications, as well as the operating efficiency of the systems is considerably affected if it is kept in the databases the history of transactions. A mistake that is commonly made and is the cause of ERP systems to fail is that people think that having an ERP implemented within the organization is having a "better assured future", but this is not the case since it is necessary to see the advantages and disadvantages of the different software packages that best suit the needs of the company, the characteristics of the company, the business line, the resources it has, among others, must be considered.Another important negative factor is the organizational culture since it must be known in depth to be able to involve all the personnel of the company to use the new system properly and there is no resistance to change that will undoubtedly change the organization; when this factor occurs is when the company fails to implement these systems.
As a conclusion we can realize that the implementation of an ERP system is not easy since as well as it can ensure success it can lead us to failure since nothing is certain, that is why we have to be aware of all the details that it implies having these systems and running them properly in order to have a successful implementation.
