Adding predictive analytical capabilities to ERP systems will help manufacturers extract deep and accurate inferences from their store of enterprise data. This will lift the fog and help enterprises get their hands on enterprise data and make better decisions. Above all, they can get a handle on the kind of rich experience end customers are looking for.
A few challenges and the way forward
ERP systems maximise resource utilisation and provide for efficient handling of present and future workloads. At the same time, ERP is a framework that proves challenging to implement, more so in places like India, where most businesses are still stuck fast to traditional factory systems.
A few players have either bucked the trend or are making efforts in this direction. Working closely with our experts, some of our clients, for instance, have streamlined their spaghetti mess of analog setups and brought them to speed with contemporary digital infrastructure, so they "talk" to each other.
In a recent study, MIT Professors Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjofsson found that businesses that made use of big data and analytics in day-to-day operations rated at least five percent to six percent higher in productivity and profitability compared to the competition.
Trusted Research reports also say that Digitisation of manufacturing can help companies cut their operational costs by 30 percent and can have a very powerful impact in the key areas of operations, supply chain management and customer service. Manufacturing companies can certainly reap significant cost savings while steering world class standard delivery, quality and customer satisfaction by implementing digital manufacturing.
Since Digitisation is the only way forward for manufacturing, the time is perhaps ripe for companies to consider implementing advanced ERP systems early on before these become de facto in industry.
Manufacturing organisations should realise that digital technologies offer them a potent chance to efficiently connect processes and people, and use information effectively without any loop holes in the operational process.
They should also consider lessons learnt from the earlier generation of technology deployments and stay away from taking a silo-based approach towards digital technologies. Instead, the focus needs to be on leveraging digital technologies to make information flow fluid and drive operational excellence.
The author is Ramesh Chandra - VP Global Enterprise Solution Tata Technologies.
END
