As businesses navigate the complexities of the digital age, ERP solutions are not just adapting; they are leading the charge in transforming how organisations operate, compete, and succeed. The latest trends in ERP are not merely incremental changes; they are pivotal shifts that redefine the boundaries of business efficiency, data management, and strategic decision-making. From the integration of advanced artificial intelligence to the rise of industry-specific solutions, these trends are reshaping the ERP sector, offering opportunities for businesses to utilise the power of technology for streamlined operations and competitive advantage.
Imagine a future where inventory replenishes itself, production lines adjust automatically, and compliance reports take mere seconds to generate. This isn't just science fiction; it's the reality we're hurtling towards in 2024. These advancements will not only enhance efficiency and productivity but also empower businesses to take smarter decisions, respond faster to market shifts, and ultimately grow in this competitive industry.
The future is Cloud
Over the past few years, we have seen the implementation of cloud-based ERP solutions rise massively, and this trend is still going strong in 2024, moving from 64.7 billion dollars to 130 billion dollars. Right now, businesses are struggling to keep themselves profitable due to the quick pace at which new trends are coming in. This makes businesses perform under the pressure of constant transformation. Organisations now need to work on finding new business models and lines of revenue to make themselves profitable.
On the other hand, the remote working culture, which leads to a distributed workforce, is also causing businesses to quickly adapt ERP solutions. Both employees and contractors are now demanding the freedom to work from anywhere. This has resulted in companies looking for ERP solutions that can provide the required data, software, and other essential things to work while keeping all of it secure from attackers.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP vendors are working with organisations to deliver on these expectations, resulting in the future of cloud ERP solutions being brighter than ever.
Real-time Data Sharing
There is no doubt that technological advancements are bringing a new revolution to the world of ERP solutions. Both automation and digitalisation are playing a crucial role in streamlining the business process and, at the same time, reducing manual errors.
In the coming years, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is going to be rapidly employed in areas where employees must perform repeated tasks. This will result in the freeing up of employees and will allow them to focus on more strategic activities.
With the addition of data visualisation tools in ERP, businesses can interpret complex data sets with ease and use them to make accurate decisions that are valuable for the business.
Moreover, with real-time data integration, analytics, and even system integration, development is going to be the cornerstone of ERP advancements. With this, organisations are going to gain actionable insights, monitor the performance of their workforce, and quickly respond dynamically to any new trend that is bringing change to the industry.
With real-time data sharing, ERP solutions will facilitate proactive planning and enhanced resource allocation while providing operational efficiency.
Increase in popularity of industry-specific solutions
The ability to customise the ERP solution and make it more inclined towards a specific industry is one of the reasons why more and more companies are considering using ERP.
ERP solutions that come with industry-specific features can bring more efficiency and capabilities to the business, leading to better profit margins and higher work rates for team members.
These programmes target both the existing requirements of a business and keeping the doors open to accommodate new changes that might occur in the industry overnight.
Apart from this, in the coming years, we are likely to see more companies move towards implementing industry-specific ERP solutions rather than going with customised systems. This is because customising an ERP solution, which is something lots of vendors are doing right now, leads to a lot of issues, takes more time, and is expensive as well.
Implementing the internet of things (IOT) in ERP
With new technology being developed, ERP vendors are going to race against one another to integrate it into their ERP solutions. This will allow them to stay on top of the market and meet the user requirements of early adopters. Thus, in the future, ERP solutions will be equipped with several IoT features. This will lead organisations to automate, link, and sync multiple tasks in one place to manage them from a single ERP module.
Mobile ERP
2023 has also seen some ERP vendors provide mobile support to their clients via mobile apps, as they have become a common norm in our lives. In the future, we are expecting ERP solutions to provide onthe-go access to critical business data, allowing team members or developers to access both the back and front end remotely from their smartphones.
Likewise, mobile ERP is going to encourage team members to collaborate more often to discuss the projects on which they are working together, leading to the dissolution of different time zones and geographical issues.
Mobile apps for ERP solutions will have a more user-friendly interface, allowing even non-technical people to make the most of them with ease. Some tasks that we expect users of mobile ERP solutions to complete are creating expense reporting, calling logging, monitoring team members, tracking time, seeing the status of critical workflows, and sending approvals right from their phones.
With real-time data and insights being provided to users, it becomes much easier for organisations to get the work done by remote team members. This will help in increasing productivity, faster development cycles, and more accurate capturing of the data.
This will eventually cut costs, as vendors will not have to work around the ERP solution to retrofit it in order to make it work for the whole business. Apart from this, a specific level-2 ERP solution is much easier to implement and allows subsidiaries to have more flexibility in terms of changing business conditions.
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