Realising the full power of the cloud to boost resilience

While adapt­abil­i­ty has always been impor­tant, the last two years made it clear that busi­ness­es must invest in resilien­cy to suc­ceed. And while near­ly all busi­ness­es had to react to dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains, unex­pect­ed shifts in demand, and new ways of work­ing, it’s our man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors who faced the brunt of this pres­sure, and who like­wise must make resilien­cy plans one of their utmost pri­or­i­ties.

The good news is that cloud ERP soft­ware is help­ing com­pa­nies imple­ment effi­cient, agile busi­ness mod­els that can change and scale at speed.

“When organ­i­sa­tions are forced to change their busi­ness process­es, the cloud offers them the flex­i­bil­i­ty to react quick­ly. Whether it’s to meet new reg­u­la­tions, seize new oppor­tu­ni­ties, or pro­tect the health and safe­ty of staff, the cloud can have an incred­i­ble pos­i­tive impact on both your busi­ness suc­cess as well as the suc­cess of your employ­ees and cus­tomers. Ulti­mate­ly, the true pow­er of cloud is that it can enable a world of bet­ter busi­ness,” said Andy Coussins, SVP & head of inter­na­tion­al at Epi­cor, a cloud-based soft­ware provider.

When look­ing for use cas­es of cloud impact, the list is sky high. For exam­ple, the agili­ty of cloud has been key for rewiring sup­ply chains to cater for changes in buy­er trends. B2B dis­trib­u­tors – like hard­ware firms that sell their prod­ucts to trades­men via branch­es – have had to adapt and offer ser­vices to cus­tomers who now wish to order online. Many have also had to gen­er­ate new ways of retain­ing and attract­ing new cus­tomers to avoid dis­in­ter­me­di­a­tion as man­u­fac­tur­ers seek to sell direct­ly to end users.

Cloud also allows man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors to extend the capa­bil­i­ties of, and around, their core busi­ness appli­ca­tions like ERP to stream­line oper­a­tions and take advan­tage of new rev­enue streams. Exam­ples include ecom­merce plat­forms, EDI for faster pay­ments and infor­ma­tion exchange, and enter­prise con­tent man­age­ment that enables digi­ti­sa­tion of the tra­di­tion­al paper­work in the pro­duc­tion process.

Effi­cien­cy can also be opti­mised through sched­ul­ing capa­bil­i­ties in the cloud. With a sim­ple Epi­cor soft­ware tool, man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors can sched­ule sales orders with mul­ti­ple releas­es to meet cus­tomer needs in prod­uct release on their sched­ule. In doing so, busi­ness­es can pre­vent two com­mon prob­lems on oppo­site ends of the spec­trum: either prod­ucts sit­ting in their ware­hous­es for long peri­ods or repeat­ed­ly send­ing the same order.

Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and reten­tion can also be improved via the cloud’s read­i­ly avail­able data. For exam­ple, sales his­to­ry tools in Epi­cor solu­tions enable man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors to view a customer’s sales his­to­ry to see all the items they’ve bought, so they can have an informed con­ver­sa­tion with their buy­ers. CRM solu­tions inte­grat­ed into ERP sys­tems also pro­vide a clear view of cus­tomers, prospects, and con­tact data, from oppor­tu­ni­ty to quote to order.

The avail­abil­i­ty of data is like­wise key to reduc­ing sup­ply chain costs and improv­ing the bot­tom line through more informed deci­sion-mak­ing. Tools such as advanced demand fore­cast­ing, advanced inven­to­ry man­age­ment (includ­ing spo­radic and sea­son­al demand pat­terns), lead time per item per loca­tion, and ven­dor-man­aged inven­to­ry all enable com­pa­nies to make busi­ness deci­sions based on hard data rather than using their gut instinct.

But, how safe is com­pa­ny data from the risk of cyber attacks? There is more good news on this front. Cloud ERP offers state-of-the-art secu­ri­ty, from data encryp­tion to sys­tem fire­walls, while com­pa­ny data is backed up on servers that are rou­tine­ly updat­ed to com­bat the newest cyber threats. Cloud solu­tions also iso­late email from ERP busi­ness appli­ca­tions, mak­ing it much hard­er to infil­trate organ­i­sa­tions through phish­ing, a com­mon form of cyber attack. In con­trast, on-premis­es solu­tions can be hard­er to pro­tect, slow­er to respond to an attack, and more vul­ner­a­ble to break-ins or nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

Andy Reid, direc­tor of inter­na­tion­al prod­uct mar­ket­ing at Epi­cor, is con­fi­dent that mov­ing to the cloud is the safest bet for dis­trib­u­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers. He says: “With cloud soft­ware, you can ben­e­fit from the expe­ri­ence and invest­ments made by your soft­ware and infra­struc­ture providers, spread­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty and mit­i­gat­ing the risk of cyber attacks. The ques­tion should real­ly be ‘why would you not put your data in the cloud?’”

While the mul­ti­tude of cloud capa­bil­i­ties is great, Coussins stress­es that it’s the com­bi­na­tion of peo­ple using soft­ware solu­tions in impact­ful ways while apply­ing their own exper­tise when full poten­tial can be tru­ly unlocked. “Nev­er dis­count the knowl­edge of some­one who has worked in an indus­try for 20 years,” he says. “They can pro­vide a valu­able per­spec­tive, and typ­i­cal­ly have great instincts. View all the incred­i­ble data from the cloud as a way to empow­er your employ­ees to make more ful­ly informed deci­sions. And then have them utilise the cloud to improve the speed and accu­ra­cy of their deci­sion-mak­ing. It should be an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for all involved and a uni­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for busi­ness lead­ers and employ­ees to build a bet­ter busi­ness togeth­er.”

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it Epicor.com

Pro­mot­ed by Epi­cor