How the cloud facilitates improved data management

Suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es are reliant upon resilient sup­ply chains that can with­stand short- and long-term dis­rup­tions, respond to prob­lems at speed and con­tin­ue to deliv­er a reli­able ser­vice ahead of com­peti­tors. But how do com­pa­nies bol­ster sup­ply chain resilience?

Part­ner­ing with a cloud ERP provider is an essen­tial first step for mod­ern busi­ness­es of all sizes. Mid-mar­ket busi­ness­es typ­i­cal­ly have on-premis­es ERP sys­tems or IT solu­tions but have not yet made the switch to the cloud. Doing so will help them bet­ter man­age their sup­ply chains, pro­cure­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er dai­ly activ­i­ties.

But Covid-19 and vari­ables such as sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges, height­ened demand and labour short­ages, as well as the soar­ing cost of ener­gy and raw mate­ri­als, have accel­er­at­ed the demand and need for real-time data and remote access to enable busi­ness­es to make swift and accu­rate deci­sions. This is enabled by cloud tech­nol­o­gy. 

“When imple­ment­ed cor­rect­ly, cloud ERP soft­ware enables ecom­merce at the speed of light,” says Andy Coussins, SVP & head of inter­na­tion­al at ERP soft­ware provider Epi­cor. “Busi­ness­es can keep track of sup­ply and demand, ensure accu­rate fore­cast­ing and enable strate­gic plan­ning while stay­ing com­pli­ant in today’s chal­leng­ing and com­plex glob­al econ­o­my.”

But the deci­sion to move to the cloud or change ERP provider isn’t tak­en light­ly. Most busi­ness­es use a range of dif­fer­ent soft­ware to run dif­fer­ent busi­ness func­tions, whether it’s for sales, cus­tomer ser­vice, pay­roll or oth­er oper­a­tions. Epicor’s abil­i­ty to inte­grate with these oth­er plat­forms allows busi­ness­es to seam­less­ly con­trol their oper­a­tions and ensure their data is secure in the cloud.

Epicor’s Indus­try ERP Cloud solu­tions are indus­try-spe­cif­ic and tai­lored to seam­less­ly inte­grate with exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Key to this is Epi­cor Automa­tion Stu­dio, a pio­neer­ing low code inte­gra­tion plat­form-as-a-ser­vice (iPaaS) which allows com­pa­nies to inte­grate and auto­mate activ­i­ties and process­es between pre­vi­ous­ly siloed appli­ca­tions data and plat­forms.

Automa­tion Stu­dio empow­ers work­ers to eas­i­ly inte­grate and auto­mate sched­uled or event trig­gered work­flows, offer­ing access to a mar­ket­place of over 1,000 pop­u­lar appli­ca­tion con­nec­tors where busi­ness­es can mod­i­fy and imple­ment the work­flow inte­gra­tions that they need. It can also call any API or read from a data­base mean­ing it’s sim­ple to con­nect sys­tems.

But, while the inte­gra­tive qual­i­ties and func­tion­al­i­ty of the cloud ERP soft­ware are essen­tial, the rela­tion­ship between the busi­ness and provider is equal­ly impor­tant. The Epi­cor Indus­try Insights Report 2022, which sur­veyed 1,350 tech­nol­o­gy deci­sion mak­ers, revealed that most lead­ers con­sid­er chang­ing providers every one to three years. 

A com­mon rea­son for switch­ing providers is poor­ly man­aged imple­men­ta­tions as a result of poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion with key stake­hold­ers. “The key to a suc­cess­ful long-term part­ner­ship with an ERP provider is to ensure the rela­tion­ship is aligned at the right lev­el,” says Coussins. “ERP solu­tions run the busi­ness and hence should be aligned with the peo­ple that run the busi­ness, not just IT. “Pre­vi­ous­ly, soft­ware was seen as an IT con­cern – and some soft­ware is, such as col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions – but ERP soft­ware is very dif­fer­ent and fail­ure to recog­nise and align is des­tined to cause oper­a­tional tur­bu­lence.”

If busi­ness­es can part­ner with a cloud ERP provider that offers smooth inte­gra­tion and robust com­mu­ni­ca­tion, then the foun­da­tions are in place for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to occur. 

Epicor’s cloud ERP acts as the dig­i­tal foun­da­tion of the busi­ness form­ing the basis from which more and more parts of a busi­ness can be digi­tised and inte­grat­ed. A key part of this trans­for­ma­tion is enhanced secu­ri­ty. Epicor’s glob­al team of experts are on hand at any time of day to take care of main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty updates, back­ups, and upgrades, enabling busi­ness­es to con­cen­trate on run­ning their com­pa­ny with­out wor­ry­ing about data breach­es. “Hav­ing the lat­est secu­ri­ty solu­tions avail­able in an elas­tic cloud far out­weigh the serv­er under someone’s desk or in a data cen­tre that isn’t pro­tect­ed against nat­ur­al or mali­cious dis­as­ters,” says Coussins.

Sim­i­lar­ly, data man­age­ment is improved through cloud solu­tions. Busi­ness­es are bet­ter able to migrate lega­cy data onto the cloud, and clean and main­tain their data when using Epicor’s solu­tions. This enables that data to become a cru­cial busi­ness intel­li­gence and insight asset.

Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty is anoth­er key fea­ture of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion facil­i­tat­ed by cloud ERP. Dif­fer­ent depart­ments can col­lab­o­rate on one inter­face and have access to a sin­gle data source. For busi­ness­es expand­ing into new mar­kets, it can also pro­vide easy data shar­ing between dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions and busi­ness units in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Con­fig­ura­bil­i­ty is anoth­er advan­tage, enabling mod­i­fi­ca­tions to match the needs of indi­vid­ual busi­ness­es, for exam­ple bespoke process­es, col­lab­o­ra­tion tech­niques and doc­u­men­ta­tion.

With sup­ply chains set to face more volatil­i­ty in the months and years ahead, part­ner­ing with a cloud ERP soft­ware provider is imper­a­tive for busi­ness­es that want to build resilience, under­go dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage over their rivals.

For more, please vis­it Epicor.com/IIR

Pro­mot­ed by Epi­cor