The remainder of the decade is expected to see the continuing trend of businesses moving towards cloud services for their IT needs. Thanks to cloud based business apps, which provide practical alternatives to the unwieldy, inflexible, and expensive solutions enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems of the past.
Price Waterhouse Coopers’ recently released study, Beyond ERP: New technology, new options, which revealed that new enterprise grade applications are fast replacing old ERP systems as companies move to become more flexible and more mobile, especially when these new SaaS apps can be integrated into existing IT systems and infrastructure to become a ‘hybrid cloud’ solution, allowing for specific areas of the business to operating with greater independence from old style, on premise systems.
“…the key to success with these new hybrid ERP systems is to focus on the actual business value they will generate. We expect that most companies will find that the benefits outweigh the costs.”
PwC identify the three trends that are driving companies towards Hybrid ERP:
Greater data availability
Moving towards the cloud makes the old idea of depending solely on a companywide, static, on premise IT system seem obsolete. Businesses are able to piece together a suite of cloud based apps spanning differing business aspects, integrated to their traditional back office ERP system. Cloud based apps also allow for much easier delivery of corporate data and information on mobile platforms, allowing employees to access critical data on any devices and from anywhere.
“Data mobility has become a requirement for virtually every business process”
Better end-user experience
Basing new applications in the cloud, businesses can move away from their massive ERP infrastructure investments, which never completely provided the end-user experiences and mobility now taken as standard by majority of customers, suppliers, and employees. Now, companies can build new sales channels, rapidly refine the look and feel of their Internet and mobile offerings, work more closely with suppliers to monitor and automate their supply chains, and provide employees with customizable mobile apps to support how they conduct business.
Leaders gain greater influence over IT investments
Business leaders and departmental managers have long needed larger influence over the IT systems that run their operations — and hybrid, cloud ERP provides the potential to provide that kind of flexibility. These applications offer significantly lower barriers to entry in terms of time and cost, allowing functional teams to pilot and implement function-specific applications — in some cases, without any help from the IT department at all.
Conclusion
New enterprise-grade applications are fast replacing old enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as businesses grow towards more flexibility and more mobility. These new applications can be integrated with traditional ERP software into “hybrid ERP” systems to enable specific functions such as human resources, supplier management, and e-commerce to operate with greater agility and independence from old-style IT organizations.
The key to success with these new hybrid ERP systems is to focus on the actual business value they will generate. We expect that most companies will find that the benefits outweigh the costs.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 3 Business Trends Influencing Cloud ERP
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