How metasfresh ERP Uses Agile and Flexible Business Solutions in Response to Digital Transformation

In a digital world, technology has naturally become the backbone of business. A quick peek under the IT hood of any modern-day company will reveal the scores of different systems, technologies and applications that keep the whole business ticking over from frontend to back. This is a far cry from traditional business operations. As we’ve moved from pen and paper to typewriters, spreadsheets, faxes, computers, mobile and the cloud, the way we run our businesses and communicate with our partners and customers has changed.

And it’s still changing. Today, though it’s true that most organisations have realised the positive impact of flexible, fast, and low-cost technologies, and have implemented them as standard tactics, legacy tools and processes that long-standing companies were built upon still pervade — and many are not up to the task of enabling those companies to remain competitive in the modern business environment.

This comes down to the explosive pace of technological advancements that has come on quite suddenly over the past decade or so. These advances, combined with open access to information and changing social dynamics within the marketplace, are forcing organisations to re-think what products and services they offer and how they provide them. Younger generations of customers especially expect every interaction they have with a company to be efficient, informed by available data pertaining to who they are and their unique needs and preferences, and enabled using modern technology such as mobile phones. Increasingly, as millennials and Gen Z-ers have entered the labour force, these same expectations are also applying to the tools they use in the workplace — including when communicating with, buying from, and partnering with other businesses.

For young companies that have just entered the market, the likelihood is that technology-enabled business processes are all they have ever known. But companies that have existed since before the digital revolution may find operating in the modern environment to be challenging and very different from their previous experience. For these companies, in order to continue to compete with digital natives successfully, a digital transformation is required — to bring them forward into modern ways of working and meet market demands and the expectations of their customers and employees.

Enterprise leaders are quickly waking up to this new reality and are strategizing accordingly. A recent report from IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on the technologies and services that enable the digital transformation (DX) of business practices, products, and organisations will reach $2.3 trillion in 2023. “This will be the first time DX technology spending has represented the majority share of total worldwide information and communications technology (ICT) investment in our forecast, which is a significant milestone and reflective of the larger commitment to enterprise-wide digital transformation,” said Craig Simpson, Research Manager with IDC’s Customer Insights and Analysis Group, commenting on the figures.

The long and the short of it is that technology is no longer a choice or a nice-to-have. It’s a fundamental strategy that must be interwoven into every aspect of the business — to improve productivity, customer experience, marketing and sales, workforce efficiency, finance management, accounting, resource planning — steering it towards growth and making it ready for the future.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software helps you do it all, while providing you with powerful data and analytics that enable you to make smart decisions in real time with full visibility over your whole business. Indeed, ERP systems have become the central instance for the planning, control, and execution of all business processes, due to the advantages of centralising all business-relevant data in — and being able to access it from — one system. What’s more, modern ERP systems provide a flexible foundation upon which organisations can integrate more and more cutting-edge technologies to advance their digital maturity and drive transformation.

metasfresh ERP is one such system — an agile and flexible business solution that can help you meet your digital transformation goals. Combining analytics, automation, and big data, metasfresh ERP provides you with the helicopter view of your entire organisation, empowering you to digitally transform all of your business processes — from simplifying inventory management, to increasing efficiencies across sales, marketing, purchasing, finance and accounting.

And these aren’t the only ways metasfresh ERP can help your business achieve its digital transformation objectives. The following opportunities to future-proof your business are yours for the taking when you adopt the metasfresh ERP solution.

Making process efficiencies means giving the whole business access to one version of truth. Only this way can you make the right decisions at the right time. For example, you need to know precisely the amount of inventory your company is storing plus accurate sales figures for the past X months in order to accurately forecast expenditure and form meaningful marketing and sales strategies. metasfresh ERP allows you to make impactful, data-driven business decisions by enabling the seamless flow of information enterprise-wide, pushing real-time data to the people who need it, when they need it.

ERP systems perform numerous tasks through various features. However, monolithic, one-size-fits-all solutions rarely satisfy the niche requirements of all individual businesses. Often, it is only a third-party application that will satisfy a specific need adequately — but this still needs to be fully integrated with your ERP system in order that you retain the single source of truth. metasfresh ERP allows you to integrate whatever applications you wish into the system, allowing you to take advantage of best-of-breed solutions — such as CRMs, accounting, HR, and marketing automation software — that will drive your digital transformation.

metasfresh ERP will be customised to your business’s precise needs, goals, and business strategy. It will be uniquely configured to help you meet not only today’s targets, but will also have the flexibility to adapt to those of the future, too.

A big part of a company’s digital transformation will be to introduce new features and tools to its operations. As it does so, the ultimate goal is growth. metasfresh ERP is designed to support scaling businesses. Your customised ERP solution will integrate new tools as you add them, and handle various business tasks irrespective of how small you might be now, and how large you grow to be.

metasfresh ERP is designed to drive efficiencies throughout your organisation. Automation plays a key part in this. With auto data loading, autocomplete and auto-prompt functionality — combined with a super-intuitive interface that can be accessed on any device — metasfresh ERP reduces the amount of time your employees spend on manual tasks and streamlines the flow of key information between departments. This effectively frees up time for your workforce to focus on more strategic and value-add activities.

As its name suggests, digital transformation is all about transforming business activities digitally. It means using digital technologies to create new business processes that drive operational efficiency. It also means using digital technologies to innovate how your customers, employees, suppliers, and all other stakeholders experience your company. Implementing a modern ERP solution forms the basis of a robust and sustainable digital transformation strategy that will help you future-proof your company and achieve your business goals.

Since 2006, we have been developing our metasfresh ERP software non-stop with open source components and under the open source licenses GPLv2 and GPLv3. Our mission is to enable each and every company to access a powerful ERP system that supports digital transformation and fuels corporate growth. Get in touch today for more information and insights.