ERP solutions need not be mysterious to business world

I have a general dislike of acronyms like ERP (enterprise resource planning) because, for business people, they create an entirely undeserved mystique around technology.

As a consequence, they create confusion and, therefore, additional resistance by business people to technology.

One of our customers, Philip Kirby of Easylife Kitchens, describes that resistance very well: “As with most companies, the inertia of sticking to what we were comfortable with, even though it wasn’t ideal, was easier than confronting the potential of disruption to the business of a large implementation and having to learn new ways of doing things.”

That’s a shame, not so much for vendors but for business people who could be doing so much more with their businesses if they were willing to use technology.

Fortunately, Easylife Kitchens took the plunge.

“As it turned out, there was no disruption. Pastel Evolution was installed within two months; we picked up our new opening balances, and haven’t needed to call in our implementation partner, Beams Ahead, since.

“In other words, the move was easy and the benefits of having information at our fingertips – in time to take remedial action if necessary or just make astute strategic decisions – are so much greater than staying with something that’s outdated or isn’t integrated.”

Easylife’s experience exemplifies why, specifically, I dislike the ERP acronym.

It implies a level of cost and complexity in both the implementation and the use of the system that would put it out of the reach of small and medium-sized enterprises.

That reputation is a natural consequence, of course, of the enormous ERP systems that have been implemented at large organisations and that are, indeed, a quite specific type of software geared to a quite specific need.

For the rest of us, though, there is no mystery about ERP-type functionality.

It is simply the organic outcome of the steady, no-nonsense development of accounting software in response to market needs.

Even the large ERP systems originated in accounting systems.

But, from the outset, they were designed to automate the management of an entire business.

So they started out big, unwieldy, and often intractable.

By contrast, a system like ours, which has grown organically as customers have bedded down the computerisation of their books of account and then wanted to extend the automation potential inherent in technology to other parts of their business, is infinitely adaptable, scalable – and non-scary.

It was developed that way. First came payroll add-on modules.

Then human resources. Then procurement, customer relationship management, and business intelligence.

In other words, customers understanding of ERP-type functionality and the system itself have matured together.

So there’s a close match between market need and the system.

And customers have been able to graduate from less to more functionality at a speed that suited their business as well as their ability to exploit technology.

No mystery. Just a kind of mutual growing up.

Glasfit, South Africa’s fastest growing motor and flat glass fitment franchise and joint venture network, is a case in point.

Financial director, Hendrik Lamprecht explains: “Having started out on Pastel Partner some seven years ago, we’ve simply upgraded where necessary to Evolution. Why incur the disruption of a new system when all our users are confident on Pastel – and it does everything we ask of it?”

The point being that the process of evolving ERP functionality should not make the system more difficult to use – or implement.

We learned that the hard way because our existing customer base was used to our easy-to-use accounting solutions that could be installed in a matter of hours.

There was no way we could retain those customers if we gave them extra functionality that was more difficult to use.

And then we realised there actually was no need to make things more difficult.

Business processes translate very easily from one industry to another and, mostly, follow the same basic steps.

So, all we had to do in providing extra functionality was keep things as simple as they should be.

The success of that philosophy has been proven over and over again by the many franchise businesses that use our systems.

Head offices use the full sophistication of the product while their much smaller franchisee businesses use locally only the functionality they need and are still able to stay integrated with the overall system – without extensive and expensive retraining of their staff.

An often overlooked additional benefit of such systems is the fact that the best practice built into the software ensures that franchisees, many of which are start-up businesses, not only run to best practice standards but always produce the same type and quality of information for head office.

The easier you make ERP systems to use, the easier it is to impose the standards you want on both data and employees.

In other words, for the sake of the SMEs that underpin the South African economy - especially at this time - it’s vital that we demystify ERP.

It should be no big deal. Just accounting software that takes over more and more of your business in the time, and  at the cost, that allows you to keep control.