Sweet Returns: For Companies Going from On-Prem to Cloud, Opportunities to Excel Abound
With NetSuite Suiteworld 2020 on the horizon, (rescheduled to August 10-13, in light of the Coronavirus Pandemic) in Las Vegas, it’s a good time to re-examine how companies that rely on cloud-based ERPs are able to innovate and achieve more timely access to data—and how they can achieve even more ROI from their enterprise resource planning system.
For companies that have already made the switch from legacy, on-premise ERP systems to cloud-based systems like NetSuite, the advantages are likely already clear. For those still evaluating their options, a recent Oracle NetSuite white paper, 8 Ways Legacy ERP Harms Businesses, highlights the self-imposed drawbacks and obstacles companies face who are stuck in the status quo.
In practical terms, it’s more than likely that those companies are at least four years behind the times—not just compared to new cloud ERPs, but in terms of the release version of the current system they’re on.
A recent Forrester Research study suggests that half of on-premise ERP system users are two versions behind the latest release, which could be as many as four years old. We barely keep our smart phone hardware for four years—can you imagine not making any updates to that device over a four-year span?
No surprisingly, the vast majority of business executives don’t regard their ERP systems as a strategic asset. A recent CIO magazine survey indicates that only 4% of IT leaders see their ERP systems as generating any kind of competitive advantage.
When you consider all the money, time and effort that goes into implementing and maintaining these systems, that a lot of waste. On the flip side of the coin, it may also mean there’s a lot of untapped potential.
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Analysts frequently cite figures suggesting that more than half of IT budgets (between 50% to 90%) are spent on maintenance, at the expense of innovation. In a world of legacy, on-premise systems that require custom integration, custom code and forklift upgrades, this is sobering but not surprising.
Switching to a cloud-based ERP is one way to fix this equation, by reducing the burden on IT teams to maintain these systems—and by relieving the dependency of process owners in finance and throughout the organization on those IT resources.
Another, complimentary approach is to take advantage of modern, low-code, highly-flexible intelligent process automation solutions to relieve some maintenance burdens from IT while empowering process owners with tools that work alongside their ERP and can relieve manual overhead for tasks like data entry, validation and approval routing.
Intelligent process automation platforms like Artsyl’s docAlpha interact with ERP and ECM systems in a way that is flexible and adaptable—so it won’t break when you upgrade your on-prem ERP, and won’t cause any heartache when you migrate to the cloud.
Some Artsyl customers, like multi-tool manufacturer Leatherman, migrated from their legacy ERP to a new system while maintaining intelligent processes to handle their accounts payable process in a way that was fully automated—allowing them to take a small step forward with their legacy infrastructure to reduce costs, before leap-frogging ahead with a new ERP.
For existing cloud ERP customers, innovation and process improvement should be an on-going exercise. Intelligent process automation solutions that integrate with cloud ERPs deliver cost and performance advantages to processes in the same way that cloud ERPs deliver efficiencies for managing and accessing structured data.
Make the MOST of your visit to Orlando for HIMSS and consult an Artsyl representative BEFORE you go.
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