The Oakuity Blog

The race for business success is a road filled with both rewards and potential pitfalls. Constantly striving for improvement is the backbone of business and commerce, but whether we can achieve that is often down to the tools at our disposal.

When it comes to accessing the success of your business, you're more than likely to have benchmarked your success against that of competitors within your industry. Have they been making significant leaps in business process, costs reduction and quality of customer service? This could be an overall improvement in business strategy, but it could also be a reassessment and reworking of current systems due to an ERP system implementation.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have been helping businesses gain an advantage over competitors for some time. ERP software pulls together your business processes, helping you work faster, smarter and stay ahead of your competition.

In this blog post, we'll examine how businesses can use ERP systems to gain the competitive advantage they have been striving towards.

Selecting the best fit

Whether your competitors have an ERP system in place or not, it's crucial to make sure yours is the best fit for you and your business. This is especially important when it comes to the industry you operate in. If you're in the business of manufacturing, then you want to make sure your system meets the specific requirements related to the industry. Do not be tempted to pick a solution based on your competitor's choice, seek to find the right ERP solution provider who will support your business’s needs.

Utilising capabilities

Once you have an ERP system in place it's important to make sure you utilise all its capabilities to the fullest. Automation and real-time analytics help detect potential failures or problems before they arise. Competitors without an ERP systems exclusive capabilities will struggle with similar issues that they have no way of detecting or fixing. Analysing these errors means you can put in place the steps needed for future improvement.

Building a smart solution

Before implementing a solution, many organisations will take part in a thorough requirement gathering process. The more information you can collect about requirements from colleagues and other departments, the better. Having a solution with multiple modifications that aren't needed is a waste of hard earned money. If your business has developed a process that overshadows your competitors, that is when you should customise your ERP software model to fit.

Strategic business planning

Waste, whether an excess of stock or extra warehousing costs is a huge issue in many organisations around the world. Many do not have the tools in place to accurately future forecast, failing to correctly allocate stock and assign warehousing spaces. An ERP system provides added value, with modules that can help you plan and meet demand accurately from your customers. Your competitors will find themselves unable to fulfil orders where you can.

Is it time to gain a business advantage over your competitors? If you want to see what an ERP system can do for your business, then give one of our consultants a call today on +44 (0)1268 724005 or contact us here and we'll be in touch as soon possible.