From Survive to Thrive: A Guide to Enhancing Your Software Systems

by Cherie Zydel and Jeff Vahrenwald, Kraft Enterprise Systems


Cherie Zydel
Microsoft Dynamics Practice Director

A good Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is your company's information backbone and reaches into all areas of your business. Implementing and maintaining a new ERP system can be costly and time consuming but a properly maintained and updated system can open unlimited business opportunities. Critical to maintaining the efficacy of your system is investing in the right enhancements.

Cherie Zydel, Microsoft Dynamics Practice Director for Kraft Enterprise Systems has spent over 13 years implementing and maintaining ERP systems for some of the country's best-known companies. Below she lists a few of the ways to make your ERP system not just survive—but thrive.

Revamp and Retool
"The first step in a revamp is conducting a thorough business process review with a reputable consulting company," says Zydel. An effective business process review should yield a detailed deliverable that will identify areas where you can better leverage your existing system.

Accessorize
One of the most common ways to enhance the effectiveness of your existing system is what Zydel calls "accessorizing," or adding vertical solutions or third party bolt-on solutions to an existing system. "The benefit of accessorizing," says Zydel, "is that it allows you to greatly expand the functionality of your system without the cost of replacing your system." One recent client, for example, was able to expand functionality of their system by adding a requisition product that greatly streamlined their purchasing process without extending licensing into their business.

Integrate
Integrating disparate systems will improve communication between functional areas of your business and will also reduce errors caused by manual syncing of data between systems. Integration also reduces the time required to manually input data. Essentially, integration simply allows the right data to be shared quickly and accurately between functional areas of a business.

Automate
Automating within your system involves consolidating multiple-step processes into fewer steps or eliminating those steps altogether. Effective automation can result in less manual entry into multiple systems, more accurate and synched data, and ultimately lower administrative costs. Says Zydel, "Each manual step that you eliminate in your business increases your profitability because it reduces your total cost of ownership."

Communicate
Finally, says Zydel, one of the most important things that companies can do to make an existing system thrive is to extend communication into their organization by enhancing reporting tools. By identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) in your business and extending them into dashboards, decision makers can gain more timely access to data elements that trigger changes in your business. "And the sooner you can get that information into decision makers' hands," says Zydel, "the more effective your decision making is."


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