Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software comes in many different forms. Some organizations leverage “off-the-shelf” solutions that come with a rigid set of features and functionality, while other organizations—typically large businesses with highly complex operations—require a customized system. Rather than having to adapt internal processes to fit within a standardized tool, ERP customization allows businesses to create a tailored solution that aligns with their unique goals and requirements.
Still, many fast-growing companies rely on off-the-shelf software and are therefore missing out on opportunities to improve their operations via customizable ERP. The key benefits of custom ERP software development include:
Lower costs: With a custom ERP solution, you will only pay for features and functionality that are essential to your business’ success.
Higher flexibility and scalability: When it’s time to integrate new technologies or make updates to internal processes, you can do so without having to overhaul the entire ERP system.
Streamlined workflows: By leveraging AI-enabled ERP software, you can automate manual, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks—such as order creation and invoicing.
Is your organization being held back by an outdated, standardized ERP system? If you and your team are experiencing the following challenges, then it’s likely a good time to invest in custom ERP software development:
Limited access to business data
As your business sells more products, expands its customer base, extends its sales and marketing reach, and integrates new technologies and processes, you’ll inevitably develop a growing pile of diverse data—including everything from customer contact information, to product or service descriptions, to internal performance metrics. The key here is to centralize essential business data in a fast, intuitive platform—rather than keeping it siloed in disparate applications, where it’s much less useful.
With custom ERP development, you can build software integrations between sales, marketing, accounting, order fulfillment, and other business systems—so that critical information from each is collected and stored on one application that acts as your organization’s single source of truth. This enables smarter reporting, and ultimately a more holistic view of your company’s operations, customers, employees, and products.
Disparate systems and software between departments
Disconnected business technologies create inefficiencies that inhibit communication and collaboration between internal and external teams. For instance, when a customer purchases a product on an eCommerce website, multiple actions in multiple systems must be triggered to process that order. The payment gateway needs to charge the customer’s credit card, the warehouse management system (WMS) needs to locate the item, the inventory management system needs to update its stock, and the order management software (OMS) needs to send email notifications to the customer, and so on.
With an off-the-shelf ERP solution, you and your team may get stuck having to manually trigger some or all of these actions—which becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, as your organization grows. By implementing a modern, customizable ERP system, you can automate normal business processes, as well as more specific tasks that are unique to your company’s niche. This is accomplished by building integrations between your business’ software and its ERP so each system can communicate with each other intelligently—with little to no human involvement required.
Inefficient processes in finance and accounting
Maintaining accurate financial information is a critical element of ERP. But older, standardized systems may not have all the features and functionality necessary to scale alongside your growing business. As a result, you’ll have to put significant time and effort into processing invoices, monitoring project budgets, and keeping track of corporate assets.
With a customizable solution, you can integrate automation bots that process invoices faster and more efficiently than any real employee. You can also leverage reporting capabilities that enable stakeholders to make data-driven decisions regarding your organization’s finances.
Problems with inventory management
Back-end inventory management failures create serious problems for the front-end customer experience. Let’s say a product goes out of stock, but that information is not communicated on the eCommerce site where the product is sold. Say a customer selects the item, proceeds to checkout, then later finds out that the product is not available. Now, the customer has to either wait longer than expected for delivery, or your accounting department has to deal with processing a refund.
This scenario is a common example of how outdated ERPs can be problematic. Through custom ERP software development, you can integrate advanced inventory management solutions that provide real-time data, so that all applicable systems and parties—from your eCommerce platform to your third-party logistics provider—remain on the same page. Custom ERP and inventory management integrations may also provide advanced product tracking capabilities, powered by IoT—so that you can prevent understocking or overstocking, lost or broken items, and other inventory issues before they occur.
A lack of technical support
From a developer’s perspective, legacy ERP systems are less flexible than custom solutions. In most cases, every system component must be written in the same programming language, which means you can only hire developers that are proficient in that language. Otherwise, you’ll have to train every new IT person on how to manage your existing ERP modules.
Eventually, the developers who manage your system will move to another company or retire, and it will become increasingly difficult to find quality technical support. With custom ERP software, on the other hand, you can integrate with a wide range of technologies, making it easier to recruit and onboard new talent.
Getting started with custom ERP software development
By effectively designing, developing, testing, launching, and managing a custom ERP solution for your business, you can streamline workflows, reduce operational costs, promote stronger collaboration between departments, and get the most out of your business’ data.
Once your organization has decided to embrace ERP customization, you’ll need a technical partner to help guide you through the migration process. That’s where Codal comes in. We’re a digital transformation agency with over 13 years of experience optimizing and maintaining ERP systems for businesses across all industries.
Our global team has deep technical expertise when it comes to data analytics, workflow automation, ERP system integrations, and so on. Plus, we regularly work with the most cutting-edge ERP technologies on the market today, namely Acumatica , Epicor , Oracle , and SAP .
