Written by Natalia Kawana
Enterprise Resource Planning – or “ERP” solutions are adopted worldwide and integrate many business applications in diverse areas such as HR management, finance, distribution, service and supply chain. They are very important for companies, especially large ones, to manage their assets, and often chosen because they allow companies to carry out many processes on a single platform.
According to Wikipedia, ERP solutions usually:
- Offer an integrated system
- Operate in (or near) real time
- Use a common database that supports all the applications
- Have a consistent look and feel across modules
We have many vendors producing solutions under this category: SAP “Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing”, Workday, Oracle, Microsoft… to mention only the giant players.
Here we will focus on the main challenges presented by SAP solutions and how Newired can help you face them.
SAP challenges
In one of my previous jobs, I had to use an SAP ERP module (more precisely, SD – Sales and Distribution) to process orders and manage the logistics of my previous company’s deliveries. I remember getting lost with codes – products, places of storage and delivery, fields to fill in, routes…
When I had to process routine deliveries, I could get by. However, things got extremely complicated when I had to process extraordinary deliveries. I always had to print PDF instructions and follow them step by step, and I was always very afraid of making mistakes – as they represented an elevated cost for the company and were on my personal and my team’s KPIs to measure our performance.
Well, this is my personal experience with just one SAP module. But if we consult SAP’s pages, in their own words, users face challenges such as: complex data models, which require expert knowledge of SAP tables in order to answer even the most basic business questions; the configuration, which needs to be tailored for each business and is rather time-consuming, among others. Bearing in mind that on top of these challenges, processes vary from company to company, customization can be even more problematic. Organizations might need to find workarounds to meet unique demands or even re-engineer processes to fit the ERP system.
Recalling every process is not an easy task even for SAP experts, let alone everyday users.
In-app guidance
When I started working for Newired, I thought: why hasn’t my previous company added a Newired layer to its SAP? It’d have helped me immensely. The truth is that many decision-makers are still not acquainted with this kind of solution, or do not understand its value.
Now I also see that the value goes beyond helping every day users. In-app guidance can also help a company’s ERP experts in processes such as customization and process-designing, and then also benefit the end users on any process they need to carry out. In my case, having in-app guidance would not only have helped me, it would also have prevented me from making mistakes and would’ve helped me with the KPIs. I’d have needed less support from colleagues and other departments and would’ve worked independently and with more confidence that I was doing the right thing.
Bearing in mind all the challenges that not only SAP, but ERP platforms in general can bring to its users, we created this video to show you some concrete examples of how Newired can be beneficial to your users, at all levels of SAP proficiency. Have a look:
But this is just one example. Newired can help you and your users on virtually any web-based ERP solution, be they by mainstream or smaller vendors.
If you are an ERP software vendor and would like to sell your solution with a Newired layer embedded in it, we offer you the possibility of becoming our OEM partner, with many great advantages. Contact us.
Are you considering adding a DAS to your ERP solution? Try Newired now and see how it’ll look!