COVID-19 has created widespread challenges that are affecting more than just our collective health. Supply-chain disruptions continue to impact businesses across most industries, leading to untold financial damage as the pandemic rolls on. While steel and timber have been the most newsworthy products throughout the supply-chain crisis so far, in reality these problems are much more entrenched.

With delays expected to continue into 2022 and beyond, you need a solution that can put you ahead of the curve. Here’s how enterprise resource planning (ERP) can help manage your supply chain.

Supply chains will struggle for the foreseeable future

2021 was disruptive for a number of reasons, not least of which a scarcity of steel causing prices to skyrocket, and similar issues across the timber, microchip and automotive sectors. Unfortunately, those pains look set to continue into the new year, with additional supply-chain concerns around EV batteries and even coffee shortages.

In an unpredictable world, businesses are often at the mercy of market forces that ebb and flow according to factors beyond their control. Without the right tools at your disposal, this can put your operations in dire straits – especially when lengthy supply-chain disruptions impact your ability to ship and receive goods, and ultimately deliver a sub-par product or service to your customers.

Building ERP into your supply-chain management

So if supply chains will continue to fluctuate throughout 2022, what can organisations do to minimise the financial and reputational cost of such disruption? The answer lies in enterprise resource management.

ERP is a way to consolidate all operations relevant to your supply chain, providing insights and greater visibility, as well as streamlining how you coordinate with both vendors and suppliers. Since 97% of organisations say supply chain management takes up a “significant amount of an employee’s time”, it just makes good business sense to integrate an ERP solution that makes everyone’s job easier.

Top benefits of integrating an ERP solution

Whenever you implement a new system or platform into your organisation, you want to know it will lead to measurable growth for your business. Here are some of the biggest benefits of using ERP for greater supply-chain management:

• Automated scheduling when an order is received, which gives staff real-time insight into planning, demand, production and delivery.
• Documentation is centralised in a single platform. This means shipment and delivery data is automatically collected and stored for valuable supply-chain insights. When used intelligently, this information can help reduce errors and improve delivery times.
• ERP solutions are collaborative in nature, bringing together all departments and suppliers in a single user interface. When everyone is connected in the same ERP, bottlenecks are reduced and productivity rises.
• Especially in the current climate of widespread disruptions, ERP gives you greater visibility and transparency into your supply-chain operations. You can see where things are going smoothly and where there are issues, giving you more time to problem-solve and create better outcomes.

Best of all, ERP solutions that live in the cloud allow you to transform traditional legacy systems into best-in-class solutions. The value of cloud-based software is that it makes organisations more scalable for growth. You can easily add new functionality as your business expands and evolve its capabilities.

Moreover, ERP is rooted in business intelligence. Get real-time insights into your KPIs for a more unified overview of your operations. Plus, you can ensure you deliver a seamless brand experience with commerce-ready capabilities – with the right platform able to consolidate all your critical systems, from order management and inventory, to merchandising, financials, customer service and more.

Signs of supply chain bottlenecks easing are there, though only just. We’re looking forward to a more stabilised 2022 driven by improved health outcomes globally, as well as the right value-driven intelligence that can deliver certainty and accuracy to decision making.

If supply-chain challenges are impacting your operations, a cloud-based ERP platform could be the ideal solution. Wild-Tech’s team of experts can help you choose the right ERP product for your specific needs, so contact us today or call 1300 360 154 to get started.