The next few years will be interesting times for the ERP industry, and a number of interesting developments will be made -- possibly in the form of rich internet applications. Early adaptors, as well as medium-sized companies, will stand to benefit the most.
At the present moment, the vast majority of successful ERP implementations have made use of what could be called a ‘traditional UI (user interface)’ in the sense that they all feature a menu style, hierarchical navigation design which supports a strict business process.
Just take a look at some of the major players within the ERP industry like SAP, Microsoft, and Epicor as well as some smaller, local ERP specialists such as Monitor in Sweden, and you will find that they all make use of a traditional UI.
Although some of these vendors are gradually introducing new designs, the general consensus seems to be that a traditional UI is the best way to drive sales. While this approach does have its merits, it is a design that does not allow a lot of flexibility and ultimately restricts the user from carrying out one process at a time.
An article entitled “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production” published in the Harvard Business Review revealed a number of flaws of using the traditional UI design. Every process must be carried out using a strict set of guidelines for example, if a member of staff needs to add some bolts to a car seat once it has been installed, the process needs to dictate exactly:
- Which order the bolts are to be added.
- The timing for the process.
- How many turns should be made.
- How much torque would be required.
This is exactly where an organisations manufacturing line may benefit from a new, refreshing UI design over the traditional UI design. The solution is to obtain an ERP system, which is rigid enough to support a fixed process, but is also powerful enough to allow some flexibility.
In our previous example, this would allow for bolts to be added in any order and will help the manufacturing line to find areas which can be improved, or to point out tasks which are being carried out efficiently.
This is beneficial to all manufacturers, but small businesses would see the biggest benefits from adopting this approach since they need to be as competitive and effective when up against the bigger companies.The recent wide scale adoption of touch screen UIs on smartphones; such as the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows 7 based mobiles phones, have bought about a new approach to interface with a computer and has made users more demanding in the sense that it is no longer enough to simply have an easy to use interface. The process used to be easy to change or to add things to, much like the simple process used to add apps to an iPhone.
The new touchscreen UI brings many new challenges for manufacturers as well as a cast array of rewards when done correctly. But adapting to this change would disrupt the flow of the current process, and would cost several billions of dollars. This is where a high quality, packaged ERP system may be able to provide a solution.
Many ERP systems such as Epicor offer a strong lean manufacturing process as standard. However, this is still a somewhat incomplete solution as a general change in the fundamentals of the traditional UI is needed.
The next few years will be interesting times for the ERP industry, and a number of interesting developments will be made -- possibly in the form of rich internet applications. Early adaptors, as well as medium-sized companies, will stand to benefit the most by this change as it will make it easier for them to scale their company without compromising on agility or flexibility.
About the Author
James Norwood, Senior Vice President, Product Marketing, joined Epicor Software Corporation in 1996, bringing over a decade of enterprise software marketing, consulting and sales experience to the company. In his current position as vice president, product marketing, he is responsible for the worldwide product marketing of Epicor’s portfolio of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and industry solutions for midmarket companies and divisions and subsidiaries of the Global 1000.
Norwood was also instrumental in the launch of Epicor’s professional services automation (PSA) and information technology service management (ITSM) initiatives, and is a driving force behind Epicor’s move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the company’s next generation enterprise solutions.
Before heading these initiatives, Norwood was actively involved in sales operations for Epicor in the U.K. where he led the roll out of Epicor’s integrated, end-to-end enterprise product suite and managed product initiatives for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.