After years of arguing about function and technology, SAP has been moving in a new direction on the marketing side for some time now. Simple is at the top of the list. Access to business IT should become simple. Applies "Simple" automatically for ERP projects?
Even if it is not entirely clear how simple is meant by "simple", a trend is being followed here. This references the user experience. Over the last 10 years, we have seen a revolution in UIs in mobile technology. Every day, users of smartphones and tablets experience that they can quickly access the data they want with a swipe and a tap. They take this experience with them into the world of work. There they then experience that they first have to Manuals and training in order to put a project into practice. Every day, he seems to be thrown a spanner in the works by missing authorisations, unknown workflows or inadequate basic data.
Usability from the cloud
But even business applications already seem to have better usability to offer. While SAP still has a reputation for high complexity acquired over 40 years, web applications such as SalesForce promise to be much less demanding. Not least against these pioneers of Saas Software SAP is launching new cloud products. For example, C4C (SAP Cloud for Customer) has also been positioned for sales.
So why shouldn't this also apply to a ERP software should be possible: a virtually self-explanatory operation after an uncomplicated installation and introduction. Why months of ERP projects with prior precise analyses of all processes and participants? Why all the experts whose expertise cannot be assessed at first glance?
ERP projects: Complex or complicated
Perhaps we can get a little closer to the answer to these questions if we first endeavour to use precise language. Some people throw two adjectives in the same breath here, but they actually have fundamentally different meanings: complicated and complex. Full integrated systems are usually complex. This is in the nature of things. If you have to coordinate and control many parallel and/or consecutive processes through a system, then this structure is based on a certain complexity. Trying to simplify the approach and the processes and their interaction will not help much. This is akin to the method used by Alexander in ancient times, who simply cut the damned Gordian knot.
The process makes the music
Understanding this mess is what makes it untangleable. Once you have understood it, you can build tools, rules and methods that can control the complex structure. And that can be complicated, i.e. time-consuming. All these questions need to be answered:
- Is there a process?
- Is the process closed?
- Is this how the process is supposed to work in the future?
- What are the preconditions for the process to take place?
- Who is affected by the process?
- Who should participate in the process and who should not?
- Which processes are influenced by the process?
- Are there exceptions and if so, which ones?
and and and...
You can see that the complexity is based on the networked nature of such a business solution. Why all this?
- To create controllable standards in the first place.
- So that as much as possible can be automated on the basis of these standards.
- generate data that ensures transparency.
The end of simple concepts
But if networking, or integration (as they say in ERP-speak), is the root of complexity, it is also clear that you cannot simply use concepts from the beautiful, colourful mobile world to make them easy to use. What do all those pretty icons on an iPhone mean? An app for every task! And we celebrate when one or the other allows the transfer to the internal calendar or the address book. Secondly, we are dealing with one user. Not several users who are supposed to work on the same process in the right order.
CRM is not ERP
What "classic" web applications such as SalesForce It is noteworthy that they are not only CRM (Sugar CRM) - successfully. On the one hand, the reasons for this are to be found in the high level of standardisation of CRM processes. In small companies, these processes are often very narrow, whereas in larger companies there is a very broad consensus on a model - from making contact to the step-by-step processing of opportunities. And to be honest: You have to make an effort to complicate things. But this is only true if you don't have to take subsequent processes into consideration. But that's exactly how people often work - the CRM is an interest data management tool and cancels its data management when the order is written. The fact that CRM was once thought of differently is a topic in itself.
But as soon as you think about all the other departments in a company, such as just adding a master data, it's a difficult task. Who should fill it with what content, when and where? Who learns about it and how? Where should the data be displayed or interpreted and how? And so on and so forth.
From that point on, it only matters if I have the tools to deal with it.
Greater standardisation of cloud ERP
So what drives ERP manufacturers to make promises that seem to ignore ERP reality? On the one hand, they certainly want to establish SaaS (Software as a Service) in the ERP world. However, this presupposes that everyone agrees to a much higher level of process standardisation. The desire SaaS to ERP customers may also have to do with a different margin distribution in this context. If at least 50 per cent of the budget does not have to be invested in consulting, more remains with the software manufacturer.
Flexibility required
On the other hand, it is certainly the customer's wish. They are facing an ever faster moving business world. This forces them to make their processes increasingly flexible. This contradicts the complex modelling and implementation in the ERP system described above. However, if one forgoes extensive integration of the processes, one can profit badly from precisely this.
However, the way out of this dilemma is not necessarily to be found in the software, but is simply a matter of common sense. You should think very carefully about which processes are cemented in an ERP, which are only partially mapped and which are left out completely.
This is exactly what a modern ERP must offer. The second characteristic that a modern ERP software must have is its Integration capability with other software systems. This openness allows tasks to be delegated to other specialised applications at short notice without having to recreate everything in the ERP. This is precisely where SaaS solutions that can then be docked onto the ERP. The fast and flexible integration capability of third-party applications is likely to be one of the most important factors of a modern ERP solution and is becoming increasingly important. SAP Business One with its SAP Integration Server offers an ideal toolbox for this.
Conclusion:
It would be nice if the ERP world were as simple as a mobile app. But as long as companies are not, we will have to accept the fact that we are getting better and better at understanding complex structures in an uncomplicated way. For the time being, we need people and the right software to do this. And still more or less complex ERP projects.
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