ERP solutions, in today’s time, are accelerating rapidly and also offer uniqueness due to innovations brought by Artificial intelligence, data analytics, user experience, and automation. These changes benefit firms by lending them increased visibility and flexibility, in terms of resources, and next-gen ERP solutions also assist in increasing the efficiency of the organization.
During a panel discussion on Building A Future-Ready Enterprise Atop Modern ERP, industry leaders shared insights on the biggest trends in Modern ERP and how it helps shape the enterprise’s operations.
Abhijit Katkar, Partner, Deloitte India believes that the definition of ERP deserves some revisiting today, stating, “In the digital age, the avatar in which organizations implement ERP and talk or mean ERP is very different than what it was previously. So, I’ll just share a couple of trends from what I see from my vantage point, advising and working with several clients across the globe and industries.”
Katkar believes that while the foundational requirements, with reference to improving operational efficiency, providing data for decision making, and such, remain the same, there’s a fundamental shift in the way organizations extract value out of the ERP investments.
“In that context, I clearly want to talk about three or four mega-trends that I see, the first trend that I see is hyper-connectivity. So, today, we are building systems not only for our enterprise but for a wider ecosystem. When we mean ERP today, we mean ERP for extended enterprise to our ecosystem partners and others and this is possible only because today’s ERP offer open architecture, APIs, and endless connectivity possibilities using IoTs and OTs of the world,” he stated, “The idea today is not to implement ERP only for the enterprise but basically orchestrate a system design using multiple ERP component or solutions that takes care of the business needs.”
The second trend that Katkar mentioned is hyper-automation. He says that while in the past, ERPs were used for providing data or reporting requirements, today, ERPs are picked up to help the enterprise with their future requirements by providing analytics.
The third trend seen in the ERP world is continuous improvement, he adds, “Today, the way, the Modern ERPs are sort of releasing themselves, it’s continuous improvement. There is an incremental but continuous update and feature functionality, enrichment to the ERPs.”
Speaking on the last trend, he says, “The last trend which I want to speak about, which is very relevant in the context of cloud particularly, is maybe related to external factors but there’s a larger geographic localization of the regulation. What I mean by that is there are regulations related to privacy, data residency, and data ownership which are emerging which are in stark contrast to the cloud concept.”
While there have been some significant changes in the Modern ERP, it is important to see whether it is coping with the dynamic changes in the business environment. Ashish Desai, VP, IT & CIO, Aditya Birla Group feels the answer to that is two-fold.
He believes that today’s ERP is more focused on the commercial aspects of the business, adding that, “The futuristic demand from the business is that how can I leverage the data on a real-time basis.”
“So, the need for the business going forward is that how can we get everything from ERP on a real-time basis? How can I use the data for making real-time analytics out of that? How can we use this data to give real-time information or use this data for hyper customer journey mappings? How can we integrate OP systems with the ERP which can help us in improving productivity and at the same point of time, in the real-time analytics out of it,” Desai said.
Dinesh Talniya, Chief Information Officer, APL Apollo Tubes believes that, in today’s time, ERPs are not to be run as standalone. “ERP, you will term it as a standalone system for the internal organization. Whereas the organization these days has become an integrated kind of organization which consists of customers, suppliers, other stakeholders, and ERPs does not work as a common tool for all of them, ERP is for maintaining and managing business internet, this is what the ERP is as of now,” Talniya said while speaking on whether the firm’s current business priorities are living up to the technology stacks already present in the organization.
Jagdish Kumar, Group President & CFO, Anand Auto shared his thoughts on how the ERP systems are helping the financial transformation of the organization, stating, “As a user of the system, there are two aspects to ERP, one is very clear that ERP on its own today is limited and the reason I’m saying this is because over the years, we have seen multiple implementations and while the world is changing too fast, the ERPs on its own is, to some extent, rigid and because of rigidity, there’s a way of doing things.The moment you say that you want things to be more flexible, there you see that the cost of implementation shoots up.”
The second aspect, according to Kumar, was the interfaces present. He further elaborated on this point, stating that they are driven more globally. “Things are changing so quickly in the real world, especially in India, given the saturated requirements and other stuff, sometimes it looks like the rigidity is coming in the way of functioning.”
