Do You Need Custom ERP Integration?

Custom ERP Integration Tips to Help You Choose the Right Strategy

ERP software solutions allow you to fine-tune business processes and prevent the company from losing money. However, a custom ERP integration might be the right solution for you as ERP software developers can help companies prevent mistakes that could lead to financial and time losses by taking care of the entire chain of business processes.

Here is a real problem that occurs: you land a really big deal with a new customer. The next day, you find out your company is out of inventory and unable to fulfill the deal. This leaves each party in an unpleasant situation and both parties dissatisfied.

These unfortunate situations can be prevented with a well-tailored software solution or custom ERP integration.

This is why it is no surprise that many companies develop a custom ERP integration system in order to prevent these unfortunate situations from arising.

In this article, we will go into detail about custom ERP integration solutions as well as give some input on how to effectively plan the ERP software development process.

What Is ERP Software?

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is a software that acts as a bridge to help manage all important components of business such as planning, inventory, marketing, sales, human resources, etc.

ERP software solutions are designed to facilitate interaction between core business processes.

How Does ERP Work?

Almost any modern organization uses customized ERP software in one form or another. As a rule of thumb, these solutions are modular and store business information in a central database. Hence the bridge analogy used earlier.

Probably the main benefit of having a custom ERP integration is that it can link together a variety of processes delivering better efficiency to the entire company.

For example, it’s possible to track the full revenue cycle starting from invoices and ending with cash recipients.

The big benefit is all the data does not have to be synchronized between several systems if you build your own custom ERP system.

Custom ERP System: What Business Challenges Can It Solve?

Shifting from a traditional management model to a customized ERP software may appear to be uncomfortable and filled with challenges in the short-term but it will all pay off in the long-term.

Here are some improvements an ERP system development can bring to your business:

Human Capital Management

There is a variety of products focused on human capital management available in the market. They are mostly standalone solutions that won’t give you the same level of process control a custom ERP system is able to provide you with.

However, by building a custom ERP integration from scratch you can help your HR (human resources) department automate a bunch of time-consuming processes like payroll or employee performance reviews.

ERP System Design: What does an HCM Interface Look Like?

ERP software solutions are made to analyze and manage data. This makes them the perfect choice for improving the company’s planning processes.

The reporting ability can be adjusted in a way to allow employees the ability to look through the data by departments.

In turn, this kind of functionality gives chiefs and department heads an opportunity to manage resources more carefully and meet deadlines.

Inventory Management

The majority of companies have their own well-tested inventory management process. However, with innovation and improvements in technology, even these well-tested processes can be optimized.

A custom ERP integration can make inventory management much more flexible and allows the system to keep a stable inventory level that is not too high or too low.

Reporting

Reporting is an important process for most businesses. Reporting can be incredibly time-consuming for companies that do not use any web-based ERP system.

For instance, some of them even allocate extra time throughout the day in order for employees to have enough time to run their daily reports.

Custom ERP integration can reduce the total time an employee spends on reports. For example, the use of customizable filters can give an opportunity to create reports containing only the relevant data needed.

Without a custom ERP system, your company may have to use four or more different software solutions to cover the needs of a specific business area.

Imagine the level of productivity your company can reach by combining them all together and allowing them all to communicate and interact with each other.

How to Design an Custom ERP Integration for Your Company

ERP system development is becoming more popular and sought as the right investment for many modern companies.

Out-of-the-box software solutions cannot provide the functionality to effectively manage every company in the world. There is no one size fits all solutions.

This is why the development of a custom ERP integration can save a lot of money in the long-term.

Let’s see how to approach the ERP system development process step-by-step:

1. Get the Vision

There are two ways to get this work done: hire outside web developers to work on your custom ERP software development or hire in-house specialists.

After you have decided which route to take, you should tell the team working on this project about your overall and long term vision for this product.

Make sure to share certain features your company needs or problems you want to solve with the help of the new software.

A quality custom ERP system should be able to at least manage data flows of different activities (e.g. sales, planning) as well as automate routine processes.

Some enterprises have specific requirements, while the majority want to include such business activities as:

– Sales
– Financing
– Human Resources
– Distribution or Delivery
– Integration with Content Management System
– Integration with Customer Relationship Management system

Each company must decide what they need to integrate into their ERP system and then inform the team to move forward to the next step.

2. Prepare the Blueprint

Now that you have an estimated vision of your custom ERP integration solution, the next step in planning is to brainstorm ideas with your company and stakeholders to come up with a list of essentials and non-negotiables.

Fill your vision with all the essential details. It is imperative to involve chiefs and department heads to get their input and ideas on what is essential for the development of your ERP business software.

You will want to ask your department leaders what their pain points are. Ask them to think over the ERP features list and write down everything you come up with.

This list will help you describe your expectations and end results of building the custom ERP integration system to your in-house developers or software development company you choose to work with.

3. Make Informed Decisions

ERP developers have to combine all the enterprise’s data from multiple departments into a single database with hierarchical architecture. This will help provide accurate data amongst the company’s employees and departments.

To do this, ERP system developers deal with components of the tiered architecture, connections between database tables as well as triggering and linking which make these tables and components dynamic.

Here are some common scenarios to consider:

– Decide whether to use a ready-made service with canned database structure and adapt it for the business needs

– Decide whether to build the ERP from scratch and use existing modules (if any) as well as create new ones as needed

These aren’t the only peculiarities and there are actually a lot of other technical challenges, so it is important to consult with your IT lead or seek advice from a reliable IT service provider.

4. Decide Where to Host It

There are also two other scenarios to consider: host your ERP software solution in-house or on the cloud.

Which one to choose depends a lot on the company’s policy and financial opportunities. It’s worth noting that most entrepreneurs pick the second variant because:

– In-house storing requires considerable investments in hardware and staff for maintenance

– Cloud-based hosting can be easily scaled if the additional computing power is needed

– Cloud providers guarantee an advanced level of security

ERP Software Development Cost

The cost of an ERP implementation might vary between $25,000 and $350,000. In some cases, it may require even more of your budget to build a custom ERP system. The cost will depend on its complexity and requirements.

If you have a team of in-house developers, it won’t be hard to calculate the ERP software development cost.

For offshore software development, the prices depend on the area where the company is situated. In Eastern Europe, the average development price is $50/hour, while in the US this number reaches up to $250/hour.

To estimate the cost of developing a custom ERP system, you can multiply the hourly rate by the number of hours they will need to implement your requirements.

Since the estimated costs of custom ERP system development may start at $25,000 and exceed $150,000 it is a good idea to contact the IT service provider you have chosen or a trusted source to specify the details and request more precise numbers.

ERP Software Steps/Checklist

Step 1 – Consider why you need to build custom ERP software
Step 2 – Put together your vision of the system
Step 3 – Meet with department heads to create a list of the required functionality
Step 4 – Choose where to host your custom ERP integration solution
Step 5 – Calculate the required time and cost to build the solution
Step 6 – Form an in-house team or hire a software development company to help develop the ERP system
Step 7 – Start the development phase
Step 8 – Test the integration with the company’s business processes
Step 9 – Deploy and Enjoy!

The cost of building a custom ERP integration system can seem hefty. However, keep in mind that the end result is to be designed to optimize your business processes and help generate you more money.

Plus, you can start small and then as you grow and scale-up you can add more essential features.

Another undeniable advantage of custom ERP integration is that it fits your business processes instead of your business fitting into the software solution.

For more information about ERP Integration, check out this overview article here

If you think it is time to improve and automate your business processes and need a reliable ERP development company to consult with, please feel free to submit the form to our experienced team. We would be more than happy to help answer all your questions and provide you with a FREE project estimate.