If you asked the CEOs to rate their existing ERP, for its ability to meet the dynamic needs of their organization; most of them might not rate higher than 3 out of 5. Besides cost, there are other most common complaints from ERP users

a) Lacks flexibility: Organizations dynamically change their structures, policies, strategies, etc. to be in tune with the market. Post Pandemic scenario has proven this even more. ERP systems are not flexible enough to incorporate required changes quickly and in a cost-effective manner.

b) Manual intensive: ERPs require significant manual efforts for ensuring the right DATA IN. Similarly, a lot of manual efforts are required in getting required INFORMATION OUT after due compilations, reconciliations, validations, etc

c) Poor last mile engagement: ERP systems are built for internal process streamlining. Their stakeholder touchpoint automation is relatively poor and hence invariably they don’t provide a higher engagement experience out of the box for their external stakeholders such as dealers, agents, stockists, customers, etc

d) No Insights or Foresights: Although ERP is a transactional system, almost all of them have built-in analytics as part of their product portfolio. However, those reports provide HINDSIGHTS rather than INSIGHTS or FORESIGHTS. They tend to answer, “WHAT HAPPENED” questions rather than “WHY IT HAPPENED” and WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN?

Having said these, none of the organizations can afford to REPLACE OR RETIRE the existing ERP. What they require is an additional DIGITAL LAYER AS A REINFORCEMENT.

They need light-weight, faster-to-implement, cost-effective, quicker-ROI, Hyper Automation bolt-ons around their heavy-duty ERP using cutting edge technologies such as AI, ML, RPA, BlockChain, Low code platforms so that they can

ENGAGE with their stakeholders better

AUTOMATE non-value-added manual back-end processes and achieve superior efficiencies

ANALYZE to get a pulse of their business.