How to keep your business on the digital forefront when old IT solutions are holding you back.

Do you have an old ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that you’re struggling to drag into this decade?  

Have you invested 5, 10 or 20 years of business process and logic into that ERP, and stand at the precipice of starting a high risk, expensive transformation project to replace it? 

Most ERP’s are great at their core function. They are critical for data integrity and to provide a single source of truth for businesses. But they get extended and built beyond their original purpose. They lack modern API’s to let you easily integrate new digital platforms and user interfaces. 

We all know how quickly technology changes over the years and the improvements that have been made to how people interact with it. Recently, the cost and difficulty of tools such as Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation, have reduced significantly, making it more accessible for businesses. 

Off the back of this change, its worth reviewing a strategy of uplifting your existing ERP by adding new digital tools. 

The strategy and discipline to fix this problem is as follows: 

  1. Contain the functionality that you are running out of your old core system. 
  2. Strip it down to the absolute bare bones of what it needs to do. Make sure it is doing NOTHING above and beyond this basic functionality. 
  3. And then take the other pieces that may be embedded into it and that don’t work well and create what is called a micro services strategy. Then, for example, you could utilise a customer sales platform such as Salesforce and build it into your existing ERP platform. 

Taking this structured approach allows you to make your company look and feel and interact like it is the most modern business with all of the best in breed digital enablement capability tools. 

But, you have done it in a fraction of time at a fraction of the cost.  

So, if you feel like you are being constrained by your core IT platforms and that your only alternative is to rip them out and start again.  

Think again.  

Genuinely consider a micro services approach and get an expert to do it for you.