ERP ( Enterprise Resource Planning) and BI ( Business Intelligence) have helped many corporations achieved unimaginable heights. With integral mantra of innovation, productivity and cutting waste, many businesses are competing nose-to-nose in the global platform. After a decade of growth in ERP and BI stream and saturation of same basic ERP/BI usage, many business are looking for some miraculous advancement in this field. And I, for one, believe that the game is not over yet. Every advancement in IT technology showcases more room for improvement. Being worked on many ERPs, BIs, and other state-of-art software products, I can generally discuss about the lack of sufficiency and vision for new opportunities from a vantage point.
One area where any technology firm can take a giant leap is the availability of real-time information. Due to complex integration of many IT systems, the real-time data availability has taken a back seat. As a result, some of the business areas, where the real-time solutions can potentially bring big saving or revenue, are silent and waiting for resurrection. For example, when a transportation division in a manufacturing firm sends a load tendering ( quote for the transportation fee) to potential transport vendors, they have to wait from 3 hrs to a day. In the world of lean manufacturing, that time is considered a waste. And if we need to resend another quote in response to the counter-offer from the transport vendors, it limits the choice resulting in overpaying of transportation fee. On the other hand, a common console can be used among the companies. The customers will feed in the general information like the product size, dimensions,etc , which is generally available with the companies. The transport companies can create à la carte of transportation choices and can also decide to link the price with the market fuel price or tax that can always gives the right price. Well, the potential is unlimited. When a transportation guy in a manufacturing firm wants to find the potential vendors, the console can give the information instantly.
Take another example. A purchasing agent wants to find the lowest price of a raw material. In a fast growing company, some raw materials are very crucial to the product and the price of them are also depend on the fuel, import-export constraint,etc. In my company, resin is one such example. A console like above can help find the right vendors within the desired price. Also, in the event of market fluctuation, it would be much easier to change the vendor without delaying the manufacturing time. What a deal!!!
But there are many challenges in creating this console. Or should I say opportunities!!! For example, the vendors will be wary about the breach,which reveal the price to the competitors. Also, not every company can agree to share the product information for the same reason. So the companies will be apprehensive of putting the product information . In all, security plays a very important role and a robust struture needs to be created. Secondly, not every company can have a system to support the console. An online console , through managed service, can solve this problem. Finally, one of the biggest challenge in the implementation of console is feeding it with companies’s product information. In this fast growing world, companies’ business model changes quickly. Hence, an integrated solution ( or interface in term of IT) would be requied that is independent of ERP and could grab information based on the specification of the ERP. This interface can compromise the time. So more research should be done to overcome this hurdle.
Disclaimer: The idea should not be used for any commercial or personal purpose without my prior knowledge.
