Importance of agile ERP

By Sean Fernando

“Adaptability”, “the ability to change” or “the capacity to accommodate” are what we expect when we talk about agility in general. These are reasonable expectations. The same expectations will apply in the arena of business, business processes and the technology that governs it.

There is very little that remains static and predictable in the currently global market place.

We see the rise and fall of many markets and economies globally. In such a volatile environment a business will no doubt need to be dynamic, and always need to be in a position to change and adapt according to these ever changing external factors.

With all these been said, how can an organisation become dynamic in order to ride the waves of change? I’m not sure if the answer is obvious.

But we need to be in position to change our enterprise processes and its information flows, fast and with a minimum amount of fuss. The right technology implemented in the right way will surely put us in the direction of achieving this.

Now let’s make the link. In order to make your business processes dynamic you need to have a technology framework that is not rigid. Now here’s the problem.

Many organisations opt for enterprise applications to govern their business in the hope that a non-rigid application would bring about the much needed change to the business.  

In most cases change occurs, but the impact of this change is not positive. The reason for this is the application not having the required agility that it was supposed to have.

What makes an application truly agile? I believe in order to be agile you need to be always one step ahead in delivering a solution and its underlining technology – ‘Tomorrow’s Technology Today’.

‘An ERP for Agile Business’ being the overall emphasis, you would need to consider several aspects in being truly agile. Agility through technology, designed for purpose and low total cost of agility and agility in delivery are some these aspects.

Agility through technology: An ERP should support change by being flexible and easy to adapt. Built using components, the software solution should easily be expanded as needs change.

A Service-Oriented Component Architecture (SOA) makes integration, communication, and cooperation easier with customers and partners. Hence a SOA framework and component based architecture would be critical points to consider. Designed for purpose: This component based architecture needs to be an integral part of the application making it both a complete business applications suite and an industry-specific solution. By doing so you can combine industry-specific components, developed in close cooperation with customers and leading industry partners, with standard ERP suite components. Look for an application that fits companies in the target industries perfectly, and that still covers their entire business without costly and time-consuming customisations and modifications.

Low total cost of agility: Agility can come with a cost, but that cost can vary. In order for a company to be truly agile that cost must be kept to a minimum, otherwise the change process becomes dependent on difficult decision making, and the required investments hamper normal operations.

A solution must be built to support different modes of operations, and to make changes between them easy.

Again it must be said that the components and the service-oriented component architecture make adding functionality easy when required, and integration less complicated thus less expensive.

Agility in delivery: Delivery of such a solution adds a tremendous impact to the value proposition of implementing an agile business. ERP providers must embrace a total vendor solution concept.

Let me explain. Agility becomes difficult when a solution is sold and owned by one party, implemented by another and supported by totally different entity.

The total responsibility of the delivery, the product and support should be owned by the product owner themselves.

Having a vendor who can achieve this at a commercially viable cost will have a tremendous leverage in that vendor being a truly agile solution provider.

I believe in all of these key aspects and have seen how they have transformed business throughout the globe to be truly agile enterprises. So when you are considering in moving toward an agile business, consider an application and vendor who can truly deliver on what they talk of on true agility.

(The writer is Solution Advisor – IFS Research & Development Pvt. Ltd.)