Great Reasons to Adopt an ERP System on the Cloud

Certainly, this new approach to online, on-demand business services is receiving a lot of press and support from developers and distributors.

Cloud computing is becoming more mainstream

Taking a broad view of recent developments and announcements within the software industry, as well as trends in the business world itself, it is becoming more apparent that cloud computing is making inroads into the office spaces of the commercial mainstream already. Some of the biggest names in IT development are allocating a greater portion of their time and money to developing their own cloud computing platforms for the commercial sector. The question would seem to be not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’ business IT departments should look to adopt a cloud-based service.

Cloud based solutions can streamline your business

The next inevitable question is one that will be of no small interest to anybody overseeing the business logistics of their enterprise, especially one looking to integrate a cloud-based system into their existing operations. Because after all, if a modern, centrally-hosted software service can streamline one area of your business today, it could potentially benefit your entire operation in the years to come.

This is the underlying objective of some of the newest software-as-a-service products which can offer businesses a complete Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) service that caters for the full spectrum of a company’s operations. And whilst a full, end-to-end service may be several years off yet for larger companies, there are already a number of cloud-based ERP products out there which allow for small and medium sized clients to manage and automate many aspects of their business activities.

Cloud computing is expanding

With these new enterprise resource planning platforms, existing cloud-based products which at one time were limited to assisting customer relations management and data storage can now be expanded to incorporate any number of functions: from accounting and contract renewals to data entry to service level agreement enforcements.

Subscription based service

Cloud computing offers a remarkably rewarding new approach to costing your IT system. Any company that has already moved its data storage processes into the cloud will be aware of the marked savings that can be made. With cloud data storage, your business pays for the exact capacity that is required and not for a room of disk arrays that may hypothetically be needed some time in the future and purchased just in case. In the same way, a software-as-a-service product such as a complete ERP service can allow your business to pick and choose, hand selecting the aspects of the service that it needs, as and when you need them. Your transition to a new cloud ERP can therefore be introduced incrementally, giving employees the necessary time to adapt to their new online working environment.

Easier to maintain

On a similar note, the off-site situation of your new service can be a weight off the mind of any manager or IT consultant who has become all too familiar with the workload of a problematic in-house computer system. With your ERP product delivered as a service via the internet, you receive all of the maintenance, consultancy and updates you may require too. A computer error or malfunction in your self-contained, in-house system can take your whole business offline until it is repaired. And as the scale of your operation grows, so too does the impact of such an occurrence have on your ability to perform.

The ERP service that you select will maintain their own servers and their software platform, giving your business the peace of mind knowing that you have a reliable product as the logistical backbone of your day-to-day activity. For the business leader who prefers to keep a tight hold of the reigns this might at first seem a daunting prospect to hand over the control and maintenance of your company’s IT systems and online services to an off-site third party, but cloud computing’s distributed nature means that the system is far more secure and far more resilient than your current set-up. A malfunction with a server simply means that your service will be relayed to you via an alternative source within the cloud. Your own operations will likely not even notice when general maintenance is carried out.

The tremendous benefits of a cloud-computed enterprise resource planning service will introduce a new level of automation, connectivity and cost savings to everyday business activity. Some within the service industry speculate that a truly end-to-end service may never be distributed through the internet cloud – citing the on-site model as the most effective method for licensing and charging commercial customers for the service – there is little doubt that this next generation technology will find a useful application for itself in many areas of your business.

This is a guest post on behalf of Epicor who (amongst other products) offer a complete cloud based ERP solution.

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