How to Choose the Right ERP Software
With various benefits and features, and so many options available, choosing the right ERP solution for your business can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.
Local World is here to help you not only learn how to choose the right ERP software for your business but also to guide you through the process and evaluate what the right solution is for your organization’s specific needs.
What Makes a Good Fit?
Consisting of various integrated modules and valuable business applications, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system utilizes a central database to share information and unify your business operations, optimizing work and streamlining processes.
Your ERP is the nucleus of your business. It is essential to everyday processes and paramount to the success of your teams, departments, and the entire organization. While the ERP marketplace boasts numerous varieties of ERP systems that each offer different solutions and prioritize distinct benefits, not every system—or even application—will satisfy your business’s operational requirements.
Finding the right ERP solution for your business starts with evaluating your business process, understanding your specific needs, and successful implementation.
Evaluate Your Process
Going through your ERP checklist in order to evaluate your business process, it is essential to detail and review your pain points and strengths. Analyzing the essential, everyday processes allows you to gain a better understanding of how your business functions day-to-day and year-over-year. Having a detailed understanding and account of your process also allows you to ask more targeted and specific questions to consulting firms or vendors, ultimately getting you closer to the right ERP solution.
Understand Your Needs
Once you gain an understanding of your business process, you can better discern exactly what your business needs are. Will your teams benefit from Salesforce Marketing Cloud? What about Salesforce Service Cloud? Or an automatic data processing system?
When choosing the right ERP software, it is crucial to understand what your current infrastructure needs and if potential software solutions will add value to your business operations.
Consider Your Options
While a handful of software vendors maintain a large share of the ERP marketplace, there are numerous solutions with different functionalities and strengths that could add significant value to your business.
Seeking out impartial advice and recommendations can be beneficial, but commonly it is not always directly applicable to your business needs. Similarly, software sales reps are often offering biased advice and suggestions to benefit their bottom line.
Hire an experienced ERP consultant or a software-specific specialist like an SAP consultant to provide valuable and situational advice to help you make an informed decision.
Implement a Plan
The final step of choosing the right ERP software comes with generating a practical implementation plan. Developing an in-depth plan that accounts for both the timeline and price of installation, testing, consulting, and any other needs that might be required will greatly benefit your entire ERP software solution decision.
Identifying the need for staffing early on in your implementation process allows you to determine at what point your ERP process will most benefit from an ERP consultant. Will you need someone for implementation? Long-term optimization? Will they be a temporary Consultant or a permanent hire? Not sure? That’s where we step in.
Local World deploys top ERP consultants with one purpose—to represent your interests and ensure your success. Our experts can guide you through your entire ERP process.
