Today’s COO is faced with many challenging tasks on a daily basis but none more critical or difficult to quantify than the over-arching responsibility of preserving the organization’s strategic advantage. COOs increasingly require an ERP solution that can deliver efficiencies, support growth initiatives that shrink business cycles and can meaningfully contribute to business performance.
Here are the top 10 benefits of an ERP system for the COO:
- Agility
COOs can’t control the future, but an ERP system provides a platform for more effective management of change and evolving business circumstances.
- Functional Collaboration
Disconnected business systems will bury you in hierarchy, reduce visibility and delay critical decision-making, ultimately diminishing profitability. The right ERP solution will break down structural barriers and discourage these functional silos.
- Automation
Without business process automation, repetitive manual processes become both time wasters and error magnets. Good ERP solutions provide tracking capabilities that support compliance, thus delivering improved visibility and better margins.
- Innovative Technologies
Exciting new IT capabilities, such as cloud, mobility, machine learning and Internet of Things, are continually emerging to help COOs uncover hidden data and meaningful analytics that can be harnessed to provide a real competitive edge.
- Identification of Budget Busters vs. Opportunity
What today’s best COOs are looking for are systems that can project time and resource allocations accurately in order to identify the advantages or consequences of making changes. ERP is no longer a forensic process but rather a more precise forecast of the business landscape.
- Partner Advantages
One of the most critical areas for achieving better operational controls is tighter integration to key strategic partners. There are multiple points of connection through a well-integrated ERP system.
- Do-It-Yourself Customization Mentality
Today’s best ERP companies give their customers the ability to tailor the applications that they are using, by role, by function, by geography, without core engineering.
- Strategic Alerts
The ever-growing volume of data is often making it harder – not easier – for companies without efficient, current analytic technologies to identify critical operational outputs and trends. Analytic-embedded ERP solutions allow COOs to set parameters to see potential problems and react more quickly.
- Customer Service Edge
ERP systems can deliver key data to both understanding and predicting customer behavior for both retention and up-selling initiatives.
- Evolving Beyond ‘Good Enough’
Complacency with current systems is the enemy of operational progression. It’s not enough for companies to have repetitive or manual processes that just cover the basics. Broader capability and efficiency is essential for today’s fast-moving and super competitive business environment.
