Since its creation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has been providing companies with the capability to effectively manage operational data and improve overall efficiency within the company. In addition to providing accurate, up-to-date information that can help companies make decisions more quickly, enterprise resource management software enables businesses to effectively serve their customers through their entire lifecycle. Due to the current advancements in technology, new ERP software solutions offer companies the same remarkable features with greater ease of use in order to further improve overall benefits and ROI. 

The best ERP software vendors (Infor and Sage) today are meeting customer demands by upgrading their solutions with a wide range of capabilities that improve usability. This whitepaper details the business impact of modern usability enhancements that include visual processes, dashboards, an intuitive user interface, a common look and feel, configurability, SOA architecture, mobile interfaces, eCommerce integration and business intelligence. ERP solutions that incorporate these capabilities reduce training and implementation timeframes to deliver faster ROI, reduce total cost of ownership, improve productivity, improve staffing flexibility and enhance collaboration.

Traditional ERPs: Sophisticated Functionality; Difficult to Use

The sophisticated functionality that ERP solutions offer has historically come with considerable complexity. ERP usability has been plagued by issues that include: 

• Difficult to learn—CFO Magazine reported that 20 percent of enterprise-software users responding to a recent survey said their top causes of wasted time were learning different modules and applications and just trying to find task-related information. Users required considerable training and were unable to perform unaccustomed tasks when taking on new responsibilities or filling in for another employee. Often, when users attempted to do something they hadn’t done before, they were unable to accomplish their task and immediately asked expert users in the organization for help. This reduced productivity for both end users and for expert users in the organization.
• Unfamiliar terminology that exacerbated their difficulty of use.
• Extraneous information onscreen. Often information presented on screen has often been irrelevant to the user’s task, leading to considerable confusion, particularly for new users.
• Tasks that run across multiple screens have made it difficult for users to navigate or even understand where they were in a particular process.
• Help systems that were difficult to use and understand.

Complexity and difficulty navigating and using enterprise applications have been among the primary barriers preventing ERP systems from delivering their potential benefits—and in many cases have inhibited the adoption of automated processes altogether.

Today, organizations are looking to ERP solutions to help more types of users more efficiently and effectively perform their everyday activities of driving business change and improvement. Strategic companies are demanding that ERP solutions help expand traditional business processes to support the complete customer lifecycle—from first contact to contract to cash to care.

To support this new approach, ERP solutions must provide staff across the business with accurate, up-to-date information in a format they can easily access and disseminate. ERP solutions must also help organizations improve their ability to analyze information to make better decisions and make high-risk decisions more quickly and accurately. Users are no longer willing to spend time digging through reports or struggling with hard-to-use solutions.