ERP in Supply Chain – Adding value to your business

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is an effective approach to sustain the competitive advantage and firm performance, and it aims to reduce the costs and provide better integration of production and distribution systems and to enhance the customer satisfaction. SCM is a process to control the information flow, goods (property) and services amongst and within the firms and also develops strong ties between suppliers and customers.

SCM and ERP have been gaining popularity among the organizations for their immense adaptability, efficiency, and their capability to interact with numerous suppliers in order to share the information about customers and suppliers instantaneously and in an accurate and homogeneous manner.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) Key aspects

SCM is capable of integrating with a number of elements, including operations management, logistics, procurement and IT, in order to manage a smooth flow of their products and services from raw materials to a final finished project. By carefully designing, planning, implementing, executing and controlling the supply chains through these interlinked systems, organizations can create value, increase their competitiveness and earn profits to succeed.

In order to successfully integrate SCM with any other system, it’s imperative to understand the key aspects of SCM which makes it an intelligent supply chain. There are five major aspects that must be properly understood and addressed in order to extract the most out of SCMs:

Communication Management: It goes without saying that communication is vital in any organization, without which there could be unimaginable factors getting affected. Effective communication enables an organization to be more agile and be prepared to overcome the changes in the pipeline to the market demands. It also enables the organizations to release their new products with much more easily and effectively.

Supply Chain planning: selecting proper marketing channels, promotions, are as much essential as determining the quantity of inventory required for

Also read: How to plan and execute ERP implementation effectively?

Integrating SCM and ERP – The proven benefits

SCM consists of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers, ERP is specialized in integrating a wide range of information regarding organizational resources to create synergies with business partners, meet customer requirements, and enhance operational performance. In order to improve the collaboration among supply chain partners, and to achieve operational excellence, it is essential to integrate SCM with ERP, and stay at a competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Apart from the above benefits, you can still use ERP to access real-time operational information across multiple departments and businesses. Lacking clear insight to the working processes and activities can create solutions which might not be sufficient to remain on a sustainable competitive advantage. ERP has a very crucial role to play when it comes to bringing the best out of the SCM.