This past year has shown that organizations need to better collaborate and connect their operations to anticipate and meet significant changes in demand. But when it comes to ERP investments, it’s challenging to move past the “known”, even if it does leave you stuck on an Island. This is why we’re seeing clients worldwide rethink their legacy ERP and its impact on supply chain. They are seeking modern solutions that complement their existing operations, increasing uptime, visibility and optimizing for efficiency and scalability.

To support evolving demands, organizations need flexibility, actionable insights, and a connected digital process that provides capability to predict and respond faster to change. Transforming the business starts at the core: modern ERP enables the digital transformation and allows the business to grow internally and externally and having your operations in the cloud is the first step.

If you’re still hesitant to change, consider these five big benefits of intelligent, cloud-based ERP you may be missing:

1. Predict sooner to act faster
   With operations data in the cloud, you are positioned to get end-to-end visibility of your supply chain, and enable the use of machine learning and AI. The practical application of AI here is connected warehouses and factories, feeding data points across the business. It can also enable more accurate forecasting and scenario modeling to evaluate demand, and even indicate if product lines should be adjusted accordingly. Accessing more insights faster allows you to act immediately, and not be reactive to change or future disruptions. In fact, this is how we helped DGS gain performance data two days faster with harmonized business processes.
2. Improve security and address privacy
   Security concerns continue to grow, with more impact faced by organizations operating on legacy systems may feel that impact the most. Without connected analytics and predictive algorithms detecting concerning patterns, many organizations are unable to detect or prevent today’s sophisticated cyber attacks. Intelligent supply chain can help organizations identify areas of exposure that impact security, compliance and reliability.
3. Move with agility to keep pace with the market
   With data in the cloud and a connected architecture, you have the visibility and flexibility to optimize sourcing and scale production with real-time visibility into customer and supplier activity. This understanding can also enable you to shift schedules and inventory where needed with agile planning.When a major market shift is expected, a flexible modern ERP can simplify and shape product portfolios temporarily while responding with high-demand products. The insights gleaned from this technology can help to adapt work and production environments, automating processes and helping workers to make rapid adjustments.
4. Innovate to meet customer needs
   Being able to see what’s coming, and shift internal operations quickly, enables organizations to adapt to new buying behaviors, market channels and customer segments. And by connecting traditional back-office ERP systems directly to customer channels, organizations can improve customer communications and convey a clear understanding of inventory, delivery status and more. Providing a more relevant and timely response to customer needs can provide more brand value and reassurance, especially during uncertain times. When we helped Breville improve supply chain transparency and visibility the brand improved customer communications, and started entering new markets 80% faster.
5. Drive top-line goals while reducing costs
   With more proactive, agile planning and more effective use of production lines and employee effort, organizations using modern ERP may see lower maintenance costs and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO). As organizations improve productivity and realize operational efficiencies while expanding to meet growing customer demand, they also can increase profitability. Converting unnecessary operations spend into capital can then be used for more strategic growth initiatives.

   Navigating the digital tides of the future will be much easier for those organizations that have reset their operations for modern day challenges. To start building supply chain resilience, consider accelerating your ERP cloud migration. Contact us to learn more about our proven Intelligent Upgrade Engine, which has helped enterprise clients such as Pellegrini realize cost savings, speed, reliability, and future-readiness.

Read our supply chain guide to see how organizations are embracing solutions and technologies to address these challenges quickly.