Advantages Benefits and Challenges of ERP Software in 2021

Enterprise Resource Planning Software (ERP) is used by the companies to manage their day to day sales, purchase, inventory, calculations, finances, recruitments, HR management, and many more things. ERP helps companies to manage different departments on just one software. This easy to use and reliable software has digitalized keeping records, calculations, managing businesses, managing employees, managing inventories etc. which is obviously more accurate then keeping records manually. As market is getting digitalized and physical management is almost impossible, ERP is the most essential software for any category of company to move forward and rise their business. It will provide you exact data and calculations that no other way could ever do. This 1990’s software, firstly used by “The Gartner Group”, was innovated to manage finance and accounting. With time and upcoming problems in the market, new management features were integrated in it. Companies find these features worthy and tried using this to manage their day to day workings. Not even professional businesses, but government and non-profit organizations also took this as an essential part of their mechanism. Use of ERP expanded rapidly in 21st century, managing back offices of different globally successful companies.

 Advantages of ERP software:

 1. Easy to manage: With ERP software one can manage different departments or sub-departments on one software. Without any specialization on IT, you just need to know basic computer knowledge to operate the software. Departments are categorized in different windows where systematic data are listed and updated. Day to day purchase and sales dashboard with graphs are also available in some ERP software where you can track your business growth through tracking everyday sales. Everything listed on the shown window will not confuse you and make your work easy. You can assign, list, upgrade, and can do many more things in just some clicks, comfort of your home.

 2. Lots of features: Well, there are different ERP software presented by companies with different features, but a fully integrated and centralized ERP software can manage a lot itself. One should be aware with the features introduced in a fully integrated ERP software.

 A fully Integrated and Centralized ERP Software has these features in common:

 - Purchase and sales management: regular purchase and sales dashboards, graphs, chats, listing, managed structures

 - Financial management: manage accounting, budgeting, costing, invoice

 - Human resources management: recruitments, attendance, payrolls, payouts, training, resigning

 - Inventory management: tracking orders, Order processing management, manufacturing, supply and shipping management, Many ERP systems is also integrated with Government Resource planning (GRP) in it which helps in public sectors to integrate office automation system for the government bodies. 

3. More Accurate Companies earlier, or even know, faces so many problems in managing departments manually. There are a lot of chances of mishappening when you run a business totally dependent on human force. You will face miscalculations, missing of records, scams, understanding mistakes, and so on with your traditional management system. On the other hand, using ERP software you can resist your business to make such mistakes or mispenning by accurate management. Computerized records and calculations are obviously more correct then calculating manually. These records are kept safe in your software for so long. Hence, chances of records misplacing are nil. ERP provides computerized and correct data which reduces chance of any kind of major or minor scams in every departments of the company.

 4. Helps to increase organizational efficiency “Growth craves for professional analytics.” You can not expect growth in your business if you are not taking care of day to day analytics. Many businesses reach the top at their initial days but drops drastically with time. This is due to their careless behavior towards monitoring their growth. Never be satisfied, develop the hunger for more. And ERP will help you to get your more. ERP software is well known to increase organizational efficiency as it can manage multiple tasks by itself. It will show you day to day graphs of different departmental works which will help you to track and manage day to day growth. This will highlight minor organizational mistakes. Tracking and monitoring the mistakes will help to reduce major losses.

 5. Decrease irrelevant recruitments Traditional management system in quite confusing and needs more human power which means you have to appoint a task to 50 people where only 10 people are required. But with ERP, you can reduce these recruitments by setting departments on your device which can be managed and used from any other device. It will reduce the cost paid to extra recruited people as a lot can be managed perfectly by the ERP. You just need to recruit less amount of people as compared to the traditional management system, who can manage that work and have basic computer knowledge.

 6. More flexible In today's situation when every successful businesses are shifting to work from home, it is very important to provide an administrative set up to the employees. Creating different setup manually is more difficult and risky. Also, providing devices to every employee is more costly. So how one can manage business with maximum employees working from home? ERP is the best solution for this problem as it is more flexible. You just need to develop or purchase a software in which you can add multiple accounts depending on your department and employees working on these different departments. Your departmental employees will login according to the work assigned to them on their own devices. You can track their work from anywhere anytime. This will break the hurdles coming in the way of managing your business where everyone is working from different parts of the country or even in the world. 

7. Faster then traditional Management. Traditional management system means making records manually, performing functions and calculations manually, forwarding reports from one department to another department manually, which obviously takes time. Now imagine one software will list your sales and purchase by itself, make your records itself, will perform calculations itself and you can transfer the report from one person to another in just some clicks comfortably. This will definitely saves your time. Using ERP software and managing business on it is faster than any other way.

 Challenges with ERP

 There is no doubt that ERP will increase your business visibility and efficiency, but it has its own challenges which one should keep in mind before purchasing, developing and using the software.

 1. You need to have internet connection while using ERP system. You cannot use any type of ERP software without internet. Well, internet is now common thing which is almost available worldwide. But still there are some parts where internet accessibility is low or nil. Managing business online in these parts are almost impossible. So before purchasing or developing ERP software and managing your business on the software you need to insure that every member working on different departments should have an internet connection.

 2. Traditional management system needs a register and a pen to list and manage different aspects. But, to operate ERP and manage your stuffs on it, you need to have a device (either PC or mobile). As it’s a software with different login accounts you cannot manage it without any kind of device. So before letting your business dependent on ERP software you need to ensure that the members to your organization should have a device to work.

 3. Third issue you will encounter by using ERP is that you and your members need to have a basic computer operating knowledge. Without it you will face lots of challenges while managing your business on the online software.

 4. Online stuffs sometimes are not that smooth. You can face server issues which can hinder your work for a day or sometimes a week. This is not at all good for an organization who have targeted a big aim in the market. So before purchasing an ERP system, make sure that it should run by a trusted backend server. 

5. ERP needs regular maintenance and for that you need to invest cost on its maintenance. Also, in this constantly changing market, you need to make sure that upcoming new features are upgraded in a phrase of time. Upgrading features also need investment and without upgrading you cannot reach the height you have targeted. Conclusion : The above paragraphs contain all the advantages and disadvantages of ERP to clear your concept on this software. Comparing working and managing your business manually and on software you will get to know that if you have a proper IT set up then you can easily go for purchasing online ERP software which will reduce your time and efforts. It will also reduce the risk of misplacing data. We are on that phase of life where if you don't prefer online management, you will not able to rise in the market. You just need to keep these points in mind mentioned in the challenges above.

Conclusion :

 The above paragraphs contain all the advantages and disadvantages of ERP to clear your concept on this software. Comparing working and managing your business manually and on software you will get to know that if you have a proper IT set up then you can easily go for purchasing online ERP software which will reduce your time and efforts. It will also reduce the risk of misplacing data. We are on that phase of life where if you don't prefer online management, you will not able to rise in the market. You just need to keep these points in mind mentioned in the challenges above.