The nine of nineteen: The best ERP blogs, resources & research

Start 2020 strong by looking back at the best ERP blog posts of 2019.

Much has been written about ERP tools over the course of the last year –so much so that you may feel like the sheer volume of information that you have to wade through is more than a little overwhelming. It seems like these days in particular, everyone has an opinion –how do you cut through all the noise and find the ones that are actually worth listening to?

Don't worry. We took care of that.

What follows is a list of what we consider to be some of the very best articles of the year devoted to a topic near and dear to our hearts: ERP technology. Some involve success stories that prove just what this type of investment can do in the right circumstances. Others outline major setbacks that we can all stand to learn from. Still others paint a very vivid picture of how far we've come and what 2020 might have in store for us all.

But all of them help to underline just what a critical asset ERP can be to any organization and why it's a category we should all be paying close attention to as time marches on.

Let’s start the countdown.

1. "What's Ahead for Your ERP Technology?"

The new year is nothing if not a new opportunity to capitalize on opportunities to improve and better yourself moving forward. With that in mind, it makes sense that one of the top ERP articles of 2019 has to do with precisely that –taking stock of how far we've come and, more importantly, where we might be headed.

This article from the Exceptional Software Solutions blog talks about how essential your ERP roadmap will be to your activities as we move into 2020, along with tips and tricks for how to construct your future planning and strategic direction before January 1 rolls around yet again.

2. "Health Insurer Shifts ERP to the Cloud to Transform Financial Operations"

This fascinating piece from CIO.com tells the story of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and their recent attempt to reduce legacy complexity by migrating to a cloud-based ERP. It provides a detailed overview of the process involved and the many ways that the health insurer helped to prepare their staff members for the important changes that were ahead of them all.

3. Getting accurate facts and figures to drive the business forward with NextGen ERP.

In this fascinating keynote presentation, Phil Robinson, CEO, and the data scientists at Exact Software walk you through how data analytics and NextGen ERP will help you answer critical business questions with confidence. This is a must-watch video.

4. "ERP Software Gives Shop Control Over Scheduling"

What makes this piece great is that it's a success story that we can all strive for, regardless of industry. After relying on time cards for manual labor tracking, Watson Grinding's leaders decided they'd had enough. They switched to a new ERP solution for automated tracking and intuitive scheduling and have already enjoyed an enormous amount of success as a direct result.

5. "15 Famous ERP Disasters, Dustups and Disappointments"

When it comes to your technology, sometimes knowing what NOT to do is just as important as knowing which best practices you should be following. CIO compiled a list of 15 famous failures that is more than just schadenfreude for those of us who are getting it right –it's also an important reminder of exactly what can go wrong when the "best-laid plans" don't go exactly the way you expected them to.

6. "Does Your IT Stack Sometimes Feel Like Frankenstein's Monster?"

This article, once again from the Exceptional Software Solutions blog, acknowledges that even if you have a world-class ERP, sometimes you need a bit more. Integration is required to deliver the data insights you need to scale as your company expands into new markets.

What makes this article great is that it provides not one but eight ways that you can leverage customapps to make your technology and your employees work better together, exactly the way you (and your customers) need them to.

7. "How Data Hygiene Leads to Customer Success"

This piece features an interview with Spear Education CEO Kaleim Manji, who advises taking steps to reduce customization and clean up your dataset BEFORE you integrate your ERP (or any other CRM systems, for that matter) with other tools that you're working with. It's a process that begins by changing your culture and, if executed properly, can have enormous benefits for your organization moving forward –particularly in terms of the relationships that you're forging with your customers.

8. "Why Mobility Matters in Cloud ERP"

This terrific article from the people at Acumatica acknowledges that mobility may not be the first feature you consider when conducting your cloud ERP research, but anywhere, anytime access also means a whole lot more for your business than you probably think it does. All told, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better overview of how cloud ERP mobility impacts your business... and how the cloud ERP solution you choose is ultimately critical to your long-term success.

9. "Don't Be Fooled by These 8 Misconceptions of ERP in the Cloud"

Cloud-based ERP systems are still relatively young in the grand scheme of technology and, because of that, there is a lot of confusion about exactly what they do and, more essentially, what they don't. This great overview from the folks at Diginomica helps cut through the clutter and outlines several common misconceptions that CIOs should be aware of about SaaS ERP before they start instituting massive changes across their own enterprises.

10. "Challenge to the Industry: Customers Deserve Better Vendor Practices from Cloud Business App Providers"

No list of the best ERP articles of the year would be complete without what amounts to this Customer Bill of Rights by Acumatica's own Jon Roskills. In it, he rejects the idea of "caveat emptor" –that consumers have the burden of due diligence before they purchase a cloud ERP system –and calls upon other vendors to do the same. Roskills imagines a world where customers have a hard-earned right to a readily comprehensible and unchanging SaaS end-user license agreement, a flexible and open platform for rapid integrations, deployment flexibility and more –and we should all be paying close attention to those organizations who rise up to meet this challenge as we head further into 2020 and beyond.

The Next Level of ERP Solutions is Here.

Based on all of the above, it's clear that the future of ERP is a bright one indeed. But when a subset of technology moves this quickly, you must be proactive about keeping up or, rest assured, you will find yourself left behind.

Contact Algorithm today

Therefore, if you want to stay up-to-date on all the latest ERP and other important industry news, or if you'd just like to discuss any of these or other fascinating articles in more detail, contact Algorithm today.