What Is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)?

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a process used by companies to manage and integrate the important partitions of their businesses. Many ERP software applications are important to companies because they help them implement resource planning by integrating all of the processes needed to run their companies with a single system. An ERP software system can also integrate planning, purchasing inventory, sales, marketing, finance, human resources, and more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ERP software can integrate all of the processes needed to run a company.
• ERP solutions have evolved over the years, and many are now typically web-based applications that users can access remotely.
• Some benefits of ERP include the free flow of communication between business areas, a single source of information, and accurate, real-time data reporting.
• ERP can be used effectively in veterinary medicine and animal health industry.
• An ERP system can be ineffective if a company doesn't implement it carefully.

Understanding Enterprise Resource Planning

You can think of an enterprise resource planning system as the glue that binds together the different computer systems for a large organization. Without an ERP application, each department would have its system optimized for its specific tasks. With ERP software, each department still has its system, but all of the systems can be accessed through one application with one interface.

ERP applications also allow the different divisions to communicate and share information more easily with the rest of the company. It collects information about the activity and state of different departments, making this information available to other parts, where it can be used productively.

ERP applications can help a corporation become more self-aware by linking information about the production, finance, distribution, and human resources together. As it links different technologies used by each part of a business, an ERP application can get rid of costly duplicate and incompatible technology. The process often merges accounts payable, stock control systems, order-monitoring systems, and customer databases into one system.

ERP offerings have evolved over the years from traditional software models that make use of physical client servers to cloud-based software that offers remote, web-based access.

Benefits of ERP

Businesses utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) for various reasons, such as expanding business, reducing costs, and improving operations. The benefits aimed for by one company may be different from another; however, there are some worth noting.

Integrating and automating business processes removes redundancies, improves accuracy, and improves productivity. Departments with interconnected processes can now synchronize work to attain faster and better outcomes.

Some businesses benefit from enhanced reporting of real-time data from a single source system. Accurate and complete reporting help companies effectively plan, budget, forecast, and communicate the state of operations to the organization and interested parties, such as shareholders.

ERPs allow businesses to quickly access needed information for clients, vendors, and business partners, contributing to improved customer and employee satisfaction, quicker response rates, and increased accuracy rates. Associated costs often decrease as the company operates more efficiently.

Departments are better ready to communicate and share knowledge; a newly collaborated workforce can improve productivity and employee satisfaction as employees are better able to see how each functional group contributes to the mission and vision of the company. Also, menial, manual tasks are eliminated, allowing employees to allocate their effort to more productive work.

ERP and veterinary industries in Egypt

Veterinarians don’t have time to waste. They’re constantly reconciling their time between taking care of their furry patients and handling the management aspect of their practice. The last but not less important burden on their mind is expanding their business. Veterinary practices in Egypt aren’t generally massive enterprises—they don’t have an ever-expanding breadth of customers coming back consistently and hence, retention is everything. Like any other small business, they rely on customer loyalty and setting up follow-up appointments with their clientele. When working with conventional solutions like Excel spreadsheets, these tasks can be incredibly challenging. There’s no automation or time-saving tools involved, and data can easily be lost or deleted forever. 

As a part of ERP systems, customer relationship management (CRM) software tackles these hassles  by making sure data is held in a centralized database. Furthermore, most modern CRM solutions provide tools to set up reminders and pop-ups, which help keep you up-to-date on who needs a reminder notification for follow-up via email or WhatsApp. Customer retention is very smooth when you’ve got the tools that makes it a time-saving, stress-free process. Besides, data security is a necessity when it comes to customer financial records and historical data. Tools such as Excel spreadsheets surely aren’t secure enough. In addition, Excel doesn’t provide the deduplication mechanisms you need to be to avoid data entry duplication in your database. CRM software provides your business with both of these unique tools, designed to streamline your data organization efforts and ensure all data you obtain is safe and easily accessible when needed.

Special Considerations

An ERP system doesn't always eliminate inefficiencies within the business. The company often needs to rethink the way it's managed, otherwise it will end up with costly incompatible technology.

ERP systems usually fail to achieve the objectives of their installation because of a company's inability to abandon old conventional working processes that are incompatible with the software. Some companies are also reluctant to let go of old software that worked well in the past. The key is to prevent ERP projects from being split into many smaller projects, which can result in cost overruns and hence losing the main value of ERP systems.

Anticipating change in management principles throughout the ERP life cycle can prevent or reduce failures that compromise full implementation.

In the end, we hope you find guidance through the information provided in this article. Don't hesitate to learn more from us about the experience of using ERP systems for your veterinary business.

Book your Oodo ERP Demo with Vetution now

Article resource:

The Investopedia team, 2021, What is Enterprise Resource Planning?

WorkWiseSoftware, August 24, 2017, How Veterinary Practices Can Benefit From CRM Software