‘Future Ready’ ERP: A ‘Digital Leap’ for public sector enterprises

Public sector undertakings (PSUs) in any country are the pillars of economic resurgence. If you look at the Indian context, these PSUs have shown exemplary resilience and contributed 25 per cent to the nation’s GDP in the last two decades. However, PSUs are riddled with challenges like unavailability of ample skilled human resources and technological obsolescence. As businesses get more agile with a frenetic pace of technology adoption, PSUs need to align their business needs and efficiencies with ‘future-ready’ Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. An ERP system that not only offers cost optimization but is flexible, scalable and customizable to fit into the organizational needs.

Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions

What PSUs can gain from Futuristic ERP?

With an ERP model that is scalable and futuristic, the PSUs can mine myriad benefits which obviously go beyond cost savings. Adopting it is aligning the entity’s vision with ‘Digital Transformation’.

Tackling Costs

As opposed to the proprietary version, all modules and features are under an open source license. Here, the cost of customization is considerably reduced since there is no need for development to customize screens, logic, layout of reports and statistical reports. Also, it offers a fixed maintenance contract including an unlimited guarantee to fix bugs, migration and a compatibility guarantee that usually runs into five years. In case of large proprietary solutions, users or customers have to earmark a hefty budget for Annual Technical Support for licensed software, Operations & Maintenance and other enhancements. Thus, this flexible ERP promises to save 22 per cent on annual cost of licenses.

Trimming Ownership Costs

Customers of large, proprietary ERP systems usually have to pay a fat upfront fee of $2-2.5k per license. By contrast, opting for business friendly solutions offers both subscriptions as well as licensee cost models, providing flexibility to the adopters.

Stability & Maturity

The stability and maturity can be gauged by the positioning of the vendor in the market, the reference sites listed on the vendor’s website and the number of documented business cases. The emerging ERP solutions have been integrated in a wide range of companies across sectors with a significant number of integrators offering their services.

Customization

This is one of the biggest strengths of next generation ERP solution. Built on a powerful architecture- Open Object Platform, it allows customizations of applications in a few hours. With constantly changing business needs and the shrinking time to reach out to markets because of more competition, there is a need to adapt and develop fast. All features are packaged as independent modules and work independently, allowing the company to install only a few of them. The company can also generate its own modules without development, using the customization tools and options offered.

Ergonomics & User interface

New age ERP offers powerful configurable dashboards that are fully dynamic and customizable per user, easing the processes of data filtering, searching, importing and exporting. It also offers integration with Microsoft Stacks like Office, OpenOffice and Webmail which improves the productivity of the users.

Resource Optimization

Implementation of proprietary ERPs comes at a steep cost when you factor in human resource costing. The technical expertise needed to operate such systems is almost twice the cost of what is required for modern, scalable ERPs. Moreover, a single skilled resource can manage multiple modules, thus saving substantially on costs.

Data Protection

As opposed to proprietary version, the source code is publicly available. This feature offers public enterprises the flexibility for modification and conduct regular audits to detect vulnerabilities.

Our in-house ERP- The Disruptor To Be..

We at CSM Technologies have developed a unique, end-to-end Human Resource Management System (HRMS) solution. As an enterprise level solution tailored exclusively to meet the needs of PSUs, it has many feature-rich, customizable modules- Recruitment Management, Time & Attendance Management, Leave & Tour Management, Employee Lifecycle Management, Payroll Management, Training & Skill Development, Communication & Messaging. The solution stack is seamlessly integrated with email, SMS and WhatsApp for communication with the concerned stakeholders for the various process checkpoints. What’s more, the HRMS provides a holistic approach for allowing smooth integration with existing finance module for salary and loan disbursement and remittance, document management system, Biometric device integration for recording attendance and Digital signature certificate.

The pace of adoption of agile and futuristic ERP solutions by PSUs is set to accelerate with the promise of optimizing processes, improving productivity, bolstering margins, ensuring quality and compliance and improving customer experience. The future is here- in ‘opening up’ to disruptive ERP solutions.

AUTHOR:

Jayajit Dash

Senior Manager- Corporate Communications (Marketing)