Page 42 - MetalForming September 2012

Emerging Trends in ERP Software
closer to when they can actually be put into full use.
Mobility
Within the last 10 years, ERP-software vendors have met the challenge of pro- viding salesforce-automation tools to field-sales personnel, through their own or third-party CRM packages. Most recent- ly, the demand for mobile-computing options has increased for executive and operational personnel. Armed with smartphones and tablets, executives, field-service technicians and customer- service personnel also have demanded access to data and applications typically reserved for the back office. Even plant personnel who are on their feet much of the day are asking for mobile apps.
Tablet sales are predicted to eclipse laptop sales in the near future, and smartphones have become ubiquitous business-productivity tools. As such, ERP-software buyers should include the availability of mobile apps as cri- teria in their purchase decision.
Customization
and Personalization
Generally, ERP software written and sold between 1990 and 2005 was highly rigid and required programmer-level skills and source-code access in order to make even minor changes, such as alterations to screen layouts. Many of these first- generation ERP solutions still are used and, in fact, are still being sold. Cus- tomizing these software packages is an expensive venture, so buyers either must conform to the software or pay upfront fees to the vendor for every upgrade.
Newer, more modern ERP systems provide greater independence from the software vendor, through customiza- tion and personalization tools. These tools allow a company’s’ IT personnel to make substantial changes to the software without requiring program- mer intervention and without affecting upgrade paths. This allows adoption of future versions of the software with- out having to re-do the customizations.
In addition to this customization
tool kit, many
ERP systems
come with
workflow-man-
agement tools,
which also allow
a company to
adapt the soft-
ware to its own, unique
business processes.
Workflow tools, for
example, can interrupt a software process; suspend a transaction and send a notification; suspend a trans- action for managerial approval; or route a partially completed transac- tion to another employee. These tools help coordinate the activities of sever- al employees, working in different areas of a company, on, say, the same record, such as loading a new item in the sys- tem. The workflow monitor could route responsibility from engineering to operations to accounting, quickly and paperless.
Note: The features described above
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40 MetalForming/September 2012
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