Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a complete, integrated software used to manage daily business activities like accounting, procurement, project management, risk management, compliance, customer relationship management, human resources, and supply chain management. The software plays a significant role in providing businesses real-time overall view of their functions via a centralized database across the globe. This completely eliminates the need to depend on individual datasets that can be difficult to navigate.

Advantages of ERP for businesses

Improved productivity
One of the biggest benefits of an ERP is the ability to automate processes, from generating invoices to managing customer relationships. This provides the employees with ample free time, allowing them to be more creative and productive and devise better solutions for business growth.

Reduced operational costs
The software also offers major financial benefits to companies. As processes become more efficient, companies can reduce costs across the organization. For instance, a unified IT experience can help reduce expenditures on multiple licenses, support fees, infrastructure, and admin personnel to improve profitability significantly. When spread across teams, this can provide a sizable financial advantage to businesses.

Information integration
ERPs are an excellent way to consolidate work across multiple business units and departments in the company. This makes it easier for teams to communicate effectively with each other and share updates across the organization as and when they occur.

Better flexibility
With ERPs, companies can also encourage a flexible working environment for their teams by allowing them to work remotely. Since most modern-day ERPs tend to be cloud-based, they let people worldwide collaborate on projects, accommodate changes, and provide real-time information. They also offer the flexibility of scaling the software, which is crucial for growing businesses.

Quick and easy planning
Most ERPs are equipped with unified reporting mechanisms, which can be a big boon for companies. This feature allows stakeholders to generate quick and easy reports spanning days, weeks, months, quarters, or even years for improved decision-making and project planning. These reports can be customized with selected sets of data to make them more efficient. As a result, companies do not need designated employees to physically go over years of data to draw conclusions – it can be as easy as the click of a button.