Plugging into the Cloud to improve your business efficiency

How to achieve primary business goals, increase efficiency levels and lower overhead costs.

10:05 16 June 2014

The prime goal for any business is to maximise its profits so that shareholders get a good return and employees are well rewarded for their work. 

 

One way of ensuring this happens is to improve efficiency so that overhead costs are reduced as far as possible without encroaching on how well the business operates.

 

As the pace of technological innovation continues to speed ahead, it's essential that businesses seize every advantage they can from this brave new world. Smart operators will know about Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP – but this software solution to streamline business operations has moved on a long way since its predecessor started to emerge in the 1960s.

 

Access to information

 

Businesses need constant access to information in real time to ensure their operations are working to maximum efficiency across all business units. By deploying ERP across multiple systems, managers and other employees get a global and real-time view of a mass of data that enables them to search for any concerns there may be and to address them proactively rather than waiting for something to go wrong. ERP helps to drive business improvement as well as making sure that financial compliance with regulatory standards is improved, thus reducing risks.

 

Customer service is enhanced because there is one source provided for billing and for tracking relationships, and core business operations are automated, including procure-to-pay processes, order-to-fulfilment and lead-to-cash.

 

Perhaps the most telling feature of ERP today is the way that it has migrated from physical, on-site systems to being hosted in the Cloud. The way forward is definitely online ERP.

 

The Cloud advantage

 

With site-based ERP the system, though effective, could be expensive so it tended to be used by larger organisations. The advent of online ERP, where the software is provided as a service by a third party, has enabled many more businesses, both small and medium sized, to take advantage of the project and finance solutions on offer.

 

The company that hosts the software will give businesses a tailor-made product rather than a generic system that may not be appropriate. With specialists to go through in fine detail exactly what the business needs in terms of project management and accounting requirements, a Cloud ERP system can be set up in weeks.

 

The creation of an efficient, ordered backbone to an organisation's resource planning, particularly one that is scalable to that organisation, can deliver results that ensure the quality of service provided remains high whilst keeping resource costs under close control.

 

For businesses seeking a real advantage in a highly competitive world, online ERP is an ideal solution. Although ERP used to be associated mainly with manufacturing processes, the development of this software means that a whole range of industry sectors now take advantage of its combined capabilities. 

 

For example, architects can get an instant update on specific projects, designers will be able to see the progress of their various enterprises, and lawyers can keep track of multiple cases as well as have a clear insight into billing and other resource implications.