Cloud: The one-way street to ERP!

Until recently, small and medium businesses around the world appeared to be reluctant, at best, when it came to adopting ERP cloud services. Lately, though, this has become a quickly growing trend. One of the main reasons behind this change is the fact that SMBs have now realized they can work with service providers for their core business applications, such as ERP systems.

When the benefits of this investment become apparent, such as increased safety, worry-free IT infrastructure management, lack of server and software provision and installation, etc., there is no room for second thoughts. At the same time, the fact that cloud services provide more functionalities plays an equally important role in encouraging businesses to adopt such solutions.

According to a recent survey by Software Advice, Gartner’s subsidiary, that involved 250 small and medium businesses, two thirds of the participating companies are NOT currently using any ERP system, while 44% relies on a combination of different systems in order to execute operations similar to those of an ERP solution. Furthermore, 59% of the participants replied that the principal reason for their turning to ERP systems was the need to improve the utilization of the data deriving from all the separate business operations. Equally high (47%) is the percentage of the small and medium businesses that wanted to improve their CRM databases, in an effort to take advantage of their fully customer-centric applications.

This is also the context of the dynamic presence of ERP cloud services, especially for small and medium businesses searching for new features and tools that will help them improve their overall performance.

The above survey concluded that even though cloud ERP is the future, the installation stage seems to be intimidating small and medium businesses. The solution is simple: you have to invest the time and human resources required to support the implementation of your project. Because, there is no doubt, that the success or failure of an ERP system depends on the commitment of the team in charge.