Taking care of common ERP problems

12/6/2011 at 12:04 pm by The Sage ERP Team

While some business leaders complain about their business software, such as enterprise resource planning, there is a perfectly reasonable and affordable solution for any problem. Problems that have arisen in the past can always be solved in large part thanks to the organizations that first experienced them and made the details of their issues well known.

That's why when company managers and executives voice their complaints, it's valuable to listen and take notes. The functionality or operational discrepancies that they tend to speak about are generally solvable by the time the problems go public, so other organizations shouldn't worry that the same will happen to them.

Forrester Research recently polled enterprise managers to discover what their most significant gripes about ERP system were. The answers reveal a lot about how companies can protect themselves from common issues going forward.

1. ERP software is costly to upgrade (30 percent)
This kind of criticism can be leveled at any major business investment. Suites of applications that can unify business operations and make the transition from resources to products move much more smoothly will certainly cost a bit of money. However, if the money is spent wisely then a positive return on investment will almost always be the result.

One of the best ways to make this sort of issue less important is to invest in cloud-based ERP. Without the need to update computers and constantly make purchases and have vendors visit a company's offices, enterprises can let most of the work be done offsite.

2. It is costly to maintain (22 percent)
Enterprise resource planning isn't necessarily costly to maintain in and of itself. Rather, it becomes expensive to manage when one doesn't partner with the software vendors that helped to develop it. That is why it's so important to establish a close relationship with this important partner as they can help to make sure that frequent problems don't crop up.

3. It is inflexible (20 percent)
The flexibility that an ERP system possesses is largely determined by the enterprise that adopts and not by the system itself. To say that ERP systems are inflexible is akin to saying that hot dogs don't taste good. If one doesn't, it certainly won't spell a lack of deliciousness for all others. The lesson here is to make sure that organizations embrace flexibility and agility as priorities before an implementation even gets underway.