Enterprise Resource Planning Trends You Should Keep an Eye on in 2019

At a time when fast cloud service applications are taking the world by storm, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms are struggling to sustain their relevance. It doesn't help that agile cloud-based apps bring the problems associated with the old hat strategy of ERPs, such as their pricing, feature relevance, and customization, to the fore. While ERP vendors are striving to tackle pricing and customization challenges, the fact remains that addressing the issue of feature relevance is a tricky endeavor.Since an ERP framework try to attend to the lion's share, and sometimes all, of a company's operation, the introduction of new features/technologies is rendered more difficult because the stack these technologies deal with is bigger. Hence, it is important that customers take charge and pay close attention to examine the capabilities of ERP tools they shortlist to ensure that it will be able to contend with their feature requirements in the future. So, to help that task a little easier for you, we put together some of the most popular ERP trends that businesses should factor in.1. Technology: Data visualization, artificial intelligence, and big data are some of the leading new technologies that present the scope to change how ERP systems get built as well as used. So, businesses who are looking to either upgrade or migrate their ERP systems must check how the new tools they are considering cope with these technologies and changes.2. SaaS or hybrid ERP?: Another noticeable difference in the ERP market is the introduction of the SaaS deployment model and hybrid ERP systems. With the former, apps are stored on cloud-based servers that are less costly, can be updated and scaled, and don't take up any physical space in the office with awkward servers. Yet, don't switch to SaaS even if your on-premises ERP vendor offers a tempting migration path because there is another option to consider: hybrid ERP. Hybrid ERP systems empower businesses with the ability to migrate specific ERP functions to the cloud while also allowing them to retain on-premises control over other aspects, the ones that are the most easily affected by compliance regulations.3. Social media: Though ERPs usually focus on operations instead of marketing, but the modules that deal with sales must now embrace become social media. ERP systems in the future must be able to include direct marketing as well as data gathering links from across several social media channels to ensure competitiveness.4. Internet of Things: With more and more products and devices connected to the internet, it has now become more comfortable to funnel more data into ERP systems. This trend stands to empower companies with improved control over aspects like shipping partners, appliance performance, and the supply chain, among others. It also contributes more data to the master data pool, thus enabling enhanced decision making.We won't deny that today's ERP looks vastly different from, say, a decade ago. It doesn't mean that it still doesn't have the aptitude to drive transformation. Yet, for it to do that, it is essential to treat it as a vital part of business strategy instead of thinking of it as another software. If you need help with it, you can always engage the services of a trusted custom enterprise software development company, to ensure your ERP system helps you leverage new technologies and trends to your business' advantage.

Olivia Johnson is a technical writer, love to share stuffs related to technology & development.