Every new year sees new challenges, opportunities, and innovations for businesses across every industry. The lightning pace at which some companies need to be able to respond to or capitalize on changing markets and consumer expectations has resulted in many businesses adopting ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems to create and maintain competitive advantages while reaching maximum efficiency.
But just as ERP systems enable firms to adapt to changing landscapes, those systems themselves must adapt and change as the environment does. So what changes and shifts in ERP should businesses expect in 2020?
The Shift Toward the Cloud Will Continue and Intensify
ERP’s migration away from clunkier, on-premise systems toward a SaaS model operating in the cloud has gained traction over the last few years. Cloud-based business solutions are a normal part of daily life for many people. We see the continued shift toward the cloud as being twofold:
- companies currently using onsite systems will discover the greater agility afforded to them by cloud-based solutions
- companies just hopping aboard the ERP train will continue to favor cloud-based systems because of their lower cost and fewer barriers to entry
Greater Ubiquity Means More Extensive Integrations
The widespread adoption of ERP systems means that more and more software vendors are building their features with ERP integrations in mind. As ERP solutions become the standard across different industries, an increasing number of third-party systems will integrate seamlessly.
The emphasis on software integrations can reinforce a company’s decision to move to the cloud as cloud-based software is inherently more nimble in working with other software offerings.
With these integrations come profoundly expanded analytic capabilities. By integrating ERP systems with all other business solutions, the ERP system will have all the more data from which to draw for data analysis and reporting tasks, which will further bolster ERP’s already robust business intelligence potential.
Expanded Integrations Will Simplify the Core Software
ERP systems, as a central hub of business data, have historically tried to be an all-in-one system for business processes across many industries. The reality, however, is that ERP developers are seldom able to keep pace with developers of niche, task-specific solutions.
Because of the cloud’s ability to streamline ERP integrations, application developers are becoming more willing to support these third-party solutions rather than doing all the heavy lifting. The result is a more straightforward and useful software that performs its core tasks much better while affording users the ability to integrate the tasks they need with the best solutions for their purposes.
Continuing to Welcome AI Analytics
AI is here. Artificial intelligence has been working its way into tech applications in a variety of ways, not to mention the expansion of data collection by tech giants which has enabled the development of incredibly powerful AI-driven data analytics. The cloud and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has given rise to the volume of data necessary for AI/machine learning data analysis and decision-making, so AI-integrated ERP systems will increasingly feature automation options that go beyond alerts and vendor re-ordering processes.
READ MORE: The Accountant’s Guide To AI and Cloud Software
To many of us, 2020 inherently sounds like the future. Well, the future is here, and among other things, it is streamlined. The sooner your business adapts to the new normal of cloud-computing, the further ahead of the competition you’ll find yourself.
e2b teknologies is a best-in-class provider to move your business to the cloud. Find out more about how e2b can help you to transform your business.