Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an information system designed to coordinate all the resources, information and activities needed to complete business processes. Today, the ERP market is becoming more important.
John Hiraoka, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer, worldwide marketing, at Epicor Software Corporation, with over 25 years' industry experience speaks to Gulf News.
Gulf News: What are the current trends in ERP?
Hiraoka: There are three big trends shaping the future course of ERP. Today, companies are demanding faster deployment, akin to the pace at which they themselves operate. Secondly, small and medium size companies are realising the virtues of ERP. And across these two trends, there is an underlying message of "better return on investment (ROI)" from ERP. This third new trend is forcing all participants towards "The Cloud" - the next big technology step that will allow companies to reduce IT costs, and at the same time manage risk of not hosting its own systems.
Gulf News: How has the recent global economic meltdown affected the ERP industry?
Hiraoka: Despite current global economic issues, most IT industry experts believe the industry will not see budgets plunge to the depths of the post-dot.com era.
Gulf News: The behaviour of ERP's "user community" itself is changing rapidly. How are ERP service providers integrating their solutions with mobile devices such as laptops and smart phones including the BlackBerry and iPhone?
Hiraoka: We describe this trend as "Business without Barriers" - enabling users to access information anywhere, anytime, and in any way they chose.
Gulf News: Companies are striving to continually provide better customer satisfaction. Can ERP help achieve this?
Hiraoka: ERP can provide hundreds of smiles to customers across geographies simultaneously. ERP is a cornerstone to customer satisfaction from order entry to order processing, to customer support, to self-service - an end-to-end enterprise business solution.
Gulf News: ERP is considered to be the domain of technology experts. Is it possible to provide ERP technology to non-IT staff in an organisation and maximise the benefits?
Hiraoka: The "technological glass ceiling" is breaking very fast. Today there are applications that enable employees to access information residing in the ERP solution via the desktop applications they are familiar with.
