Industry 4.0 is seeping through every corner to transform the way we handle our day-to-day business. The revolution in many ways has helped us to digitalise various processes from design to manufacturing and to help us to better understand and make full use of the overwhelming data volume.

To keep up with the constant change in demands and technology advancements, many ERP vendors constantly churn out new updates for their products to reflect the latest trends in the industries. By embracing Industry 4.0, organisations that are able to obtain the suitable version of the modern ERP solution can certainly thrive in the future.

Read more: Manufacturers adapt to Industry 4.0

The need for the right ERP solution is increasing

According to a survey conducted by Manufacturing Business Technology, “57.2 per cent of companies are either currently investing in ERP or will be doing so within the next 12 months, while an additional 14.3 per cent will be investing in more than 12 months.”

This emphasises the role of ERP in today’s manufacturing industry, and the system has the potential to further develop to fit with the robust and ever-changing markets. The right ERP solution can help drive efficiency and reduce the overall operational costs.

Read more: How ERP revolutionises manufacturing - Problems and solutions

Manufacturers should keep in mind that the selected ERP solution should be able to support your current strategy as well your plan for the future. In order to be able to do so, you need to:

• Identify any gap you currently have and align those gaps with the current and future plans.
• Having top managers join in with the evaluation process as this is critical to the success of the implementation.
• Have a clear vision of how your business will become in the future, then work your way back and focus on the day-to-day operations.

Read more: How manufacturers can achieve a more streamlined order-to-delivery process with CPQ

Take notes of what the employees need to input, retrieve, extract from a business system on a daily basis, and then move on to define the types of dashboards and reporting that can accommodate that everyday needs. Once the key drivers are identified, the selected software can be implemented to enhance those key drivers and generate ROI to justify the initial investment.

Read more: 7 questions a CEO should consider before starting an ERP project

The right ERP solution should also be mobile friendly

The workforce is swarming with Millennials and Generation Z to follow shortly after. One of their main advantages is being tech savvy. These leaders-to-be will not only bring countless of fresh, new ideas of how businesses can thrive but will also want to see how data from these ERP systems can be presented in various different ways apart from how they were initially built.

Read more: Big data in manufacturing

Various ERP vendors, after receiving lots of interests from customers, have seriously considered mobile applications for their solutions as an essential move for the next generation ERP. This improvement signifies the greater collaboration across departments in the future where functions like location transfers or warehouse functionality can be easily accessed via smartphones or tablets.

Nowadays, key decision makers often do not idly work away at their stations but rather move around, bouncing from place to place. Without the suitable tools to connect them with the data can cause significant disruption.  

Modern ERP systems are leveraging the technologies that stem from the fourth industrial revolution to meet customer's expectations. ERP and Cloud-based ERP solutions are built for success, it's time that you start to seriously invest in this.