With the current COVID-19 shelter-at-home restrictions, businesses will not survive if the employees cannot work from home (aside from the essential businesses, of course). The best way to enable working from home is with a cloud-based ERP system. Businesses that need employees to be onsite to perform critical shop floor functions, factory work, or warehousing activities benefit from modern cloud-based ERP solutions, because they facilitate handheld technologies, helping workers maintain proper social distancing.
Cloud ERP and Business Continuity
How do you continue to do business in an environment when suddenly everybody has to work from home? If your organization is still using an outdated legacy ERP system that does not leverage the cloud, your employees may not be able to work. Ideally, replacing a legacy ERP would have been addressed some time ago, but now is as good of a time as any to address it.
When a decision is made to address a legacy ERP, the overall technology infrastructure should be assessed, as well. Modern cloud ERP solutions can leverage additional cloud technologies, producing additional efficiencies for the business while easing the burden on IT. Examples include seamless integrations with office productivity suites such as Office 365, and robust cloud Business Intelligence platforms such as Microsoft Power BI.
With a modern cloud ERP platform, even reasonably straightforward but traditional paper-heavy job functions can be both streamlined and performed from the home office. For example, if your job is an accounts payable clerk, you might handle a lot of paper invoices that need to be input into the system for purchase order matching, routing, and approval in order to pay your suppliers. Cloud technologies facilitate the electronic invoicing process, and even paper invoices can be OCR scanned for automated entry into the system. All this work can be performed in a remote setting.
Keeping Brick-and-Mortar Virtually Open
Brick-and-mortar stores, such as grocery stores and clothing stores, can leverage cloud-based ERP systems to keep their businesses running with much of the workforce at home. As an example, let’s look at grocery stores which provide critical necessities. While grocery clerks and stockers must work in the store, back-office staff such as buyers and accountants could work remotely with the right systems in place. Facilitating this type of work environment is a responsible way that companies can contribute to social distancing, doing their part to ensure that employees stay as safe as possible.
We are working with several organizations, including brick-and-mortar stores, helping them stay open and conduct business while working from home. If your business hasn’t made the transition yet, now is the time to get started moving to a cloud-based ERP as the technology cornerstone you need. Contact one of our ERP experts to schedule a consultation at any time!
