6 business benefits of a customized ERP that you need to be aware of

Key business perks of a customized ERP

The primary advantage of getting customized software is that they can help focus on the core resources and requirements of the client company. It is important for you to know more about how you can integrate and monitor all of your company’s data management and workflows from a single platform. Here are just a few of the many benefits of having a customized Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Balance between integration and specification

One of the benefits of designing and installing a customized ERP system and application is that it allows the company to create a balance between integration and specification. A business with a ready-made ERP would be able to integrate the workflow of its different internal teams and departments. This will have a positive impact on buyer-supplier relationships.

However, the main shortcoming of ready-made or template ERP systems is that they’re not designed and built for any company or organization in general. Each company has its own peculiar system needs and requirements. Even within a single company, its various internal departments and teams have specific requirements.

The business benefit of a customized ERP is that it can be designed and built to meet the company’s specific system, workflow, and applications requirements. They can also develop and build modules fitted to the exact specifications and conditions of their company’s different units and departments.

No need to adjust to the template and retool

By having a customized ERP system, there’s no need to adjust the existing database system, applications, and tech stack to what the company will be installing. They can ask the software development company to create an ERP that’s designed around their existing infrastructure, networks, capabilities, and resources. They can ask for something that will essentially allow them to ‘plug and play’ their current work applications.

In contrast, the possible challenge with a ready-made or template ERP is that it might have certain limitations, restrictions, or incompatibilities with databases, workflow systems, sharing platforms, productivity applications, or communication tools already in use. In that case, the company would have to ask for licensing permissions from either the provider of the ready-made ERP or the software applications that will have their product codes tweaked.

Even if the company doesn’t intend to reprogram the ready-made ERP or its specific software applications, they still need to adjust to certain parameters. If a particular software application or local database program is entirely restricted or incompatible with the ERP, it would have to bypass the ERP to share the files with those needing access. This defeats the purpose of integration as ostensibly posed by ready-made ERP.

In other cases, proprietary applications and local database systems would be able to connect to the ready-made ERP system and upload their data. However, restrictions or incompatibilities might show up when they link it all up to the ready-made ERP. Some of the common issues that might arise are bugs in their codes, app features and functionalities not working, or not having access to some servers and folders.

Solutions will be customized to your specific business issues

A general and ready-made ERP is only designed to solve problems frequently and commonly experienced by all businesses. The people who create and program ready-made ERPs base their framework, features, and functionalities on what they’ve learned from previous clients. This becomes a significant advantage because it draws from the experiences of so many clients and businesses.

On the other hand, the major drawback of ready-made ERP systems is that they’re not designed to solve specific issues for some businesses. There are many problems common to companies regardless of the industry, operations, and clientele. But sometimes, a problem arises that requires employing particular solutions to address it. These solutions, unfortunately, could have incompatibilities that come from being interconnected with the framework of a ready-made ERP system.

Operations can be automated without changing the workflow

A customized ERP will allow the company to automate its operations without overhaul or large-scale revamping of its existing systems, database, infrastructure, networks, and applications. Moreover, since it’s designed while following the specifications of the client company’s current system and infrastructure, there won’t be any gaps between the company’s systems and the ERP. This allows the company to automate some of its tasks and activities without needing significant adjustments in the ERP system.

Generating periodic reports is one of the crucial tasks which can be automated. But in a company with a general or ready-made ERP, they won’t be able to automate this kind of task. It isn’t possible especially if the productivity applications aren’t readily compatible with the workflow suite of the ERP system.

Enhanced customer interface and user experience

One of the most common limitations of enterprises that don’t have their own ERP systems is that their public-facing website interface is often disjointed or separate from their back-office database servers and middleware workflow systems and applications. This is also a problem even among those who have ready-made or general ERP systems. They’re not able to ‘plug and play’ most of their productivity applications and workflow systems to the ERP.

With a customized ERP system, the software development company can design and create an ERP framework and system that would allow the company to seamlessly integrate its existing infrastructure systems, workflow processes, and productivity applications. This would give the users and customers a better user experience with their frontend websites. The seamless integration would lessen the occurrence of issues and lags when the front end has to extract data from the backend servers and databases.

An example of this is an e-commerce website. E-commerce may have an awesome frontend platform that users find very friendly and easy to navigate. But suppose the frontend isn’t integrated with the ERP system in the backend. In that case, the user might experience lags or delays when performing search commands. When the interconnection between the frontend platform and the separate ERP system on the backend is disrupted, the user will often get error messages out of their search results. The front end won’t be able to correctly fetch the information.

Enhance your CRM and boost your sales

When you have a customized ERP system, you can also ask your software development team to include a custom CRM that’s suitable for your business requirements and operations. This will enable the company to develop a CRM system and platform that would enhance the productivity and power of their sales teams. Some are now watching out for consumer-grade ERP systems.

By designing and building an ERP system that would make the most of the company’s CRM and customer data, the company would be able to boost its marketing efforts and conversion of inquiries into more sales. Since the customized ERP is fully integrated with all the company’s sales platforms and resources, this will create a synergy among the different teams involved in the sales efforts. Sales would be able to make the most out of customer behavior and purchase history analytics.

Conclusion

The primary advantage of asking a software development company to design and create a customized ERP system for your company is that you can have them design and build something that will cater to the specific requirements of your business. You can also ask them to include solutions for every detail and nuance of your data management framework, systems, infrastructure, and applications.

This allows for a smooth-sailing operation without the fear of having to deal with a lot of technical issues. Instead of worrying over the right fixes, your company can focus on flourishing and becoming the best in its industry.