How to build agility in your organization with a Cloud-based ERP system
Agility refers to an organization's ability to bounce back, forecast, and withstand the unexpected. Agility is often fortified with good strategy, but with proactive and agile strategies, organizations can make the most of the opportunities provided to them without losing out.
Building strategic processes through scenario modeling and forecasting can lead to organizational resilience, meaning that whatever occurs in your industry you are equipped to meet change with confidence in your operations.
When the unexpected does occur, those organizations that have bred agility in their workforce can come back and respond to opportunities quicker than the competition and even use periods of downturn to strengthen vulnerable parts of their business.
Keep reading to learn how digital transformation along with business transformation can help your organization become resilient and build agility through agile investments.
Why is business agility important?
A sustainable business is often a successful one, and this relies on an organization’s ability to navigate risk and manage opportunities. An agile business can also make the necessary changes to capitalize on opportunities, not just disruption. Rigid models will prevent an organization from adapting to competition or changing market trends.
You only have to look to recent events to recognize the value of being agile and resilient, whether that’s the recent pandemic, disruptions to global supply chains as a result of political conflict, or the opportunities emerging technologies present.
It’s clear that when crisis strikes doing nothing is often worse than being proactive. By doing nothing an organization will stagnate and those looking to invest in new technologies and ways often come out the other side stronger.
More importantly, business agility isn’t just an organization’s ability to react to disruption but is the proactive steps an organization takes to be able to adapt to market conditions positively and realize opportunities without large-scale operational changes.
To look at COVID as an example, McKinsey found that of those organizations that effectively responded to the business disruption COVID caused, 72% were the first in their industries to experiment with new technologies during the crisis.
Digitization of operations provides a much more customizable architecture for organizations in the Cloud, this means that they can realize opportunities, and respond to disruption, with greater effect than those who rely on legacy systems – let’s explore how.
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Create agile transformation with digitization of operations
In many cases, having the ability to track your organizational data is the key to being able to manage it. When we gain visibility across an organization we can identify vulnerabilities, monitor performance, forecast data, as well as manage people and projects with effect.
Many aspects of Cloud-based ERP can help breed business agility and create visibility in all areas of your organization. Here, we’ll discuss the capabilities of Cloud-based ERP that can create business agility in your organization.
Integrated data
Integrating your finance, HR, projects, and more, within one ERP suite, allows organizations to create cross-functional responses to disruption, as well as create collaboration across departments.
This integrated data allows for a single source of truth and a united front. When HR needs financial data it’s all right at their fingertips, and vice versa, meaning that strategic insight becomes much easier – strategic insight is key to an agile response to disruption.
Unit4’s ‘triple-value’ of integrated HR, projects, and finance provides a highly configurable workflow, built on a single data model, providing data-led decision-making for faster and more confident action with a single source of truth.
Remote Access
Remote access has become important in the wake of the pandemic, with working environments becoming more and more hybrid. Remote access to data allows for both remote and global employment to become a reality.
Moreover, with mobile apps remote and out-of-office work is simple. For example, mobile apps allow for agile finance operations as expenses and time sheets can be filled out easily while out in the field.
Moreover, remote access is key for data security, meaning security professionals can access systems remotely when they need updating, maintaining, or saving from cyberattacks. When systems are attacked, a multi-tenancy system pro
Cloud architecture and integration
In the Cloud, third-party apps can be integrated, and there is even the ability to create bespoke integrations, without having to completely rethink your operations; A huge benefit of Cloud architecture is having a large API library to create a seamless experience with adjacent products and interfaces.
Through low and no code configuration, you can customize your Cloud solution as necessary, meaning when new processes are adopted and adapted you can ensure they adhere to your current processes, meaning operations remain familiar. A rigid system may require large-scale change to adopt a new process.
These configurations brought about by Cloud architecture mean that when changes in the industry occur you have agile tools that can easily adapt. The innovation that Cloud architecture allows can create more business agility for the future.
Automation and Advanced Report Generation
Data entry and consolidation can notoriously swallow up lots of time from employees. AI automation means that you can automate many of the low-value but high-effort tasks that usually take time and create fatigue.
Unit4’s Smart Assistant will alert users only when they are needed, providing not just timely response to tasks but ensuring certain users only go into the system when they are needed so valuable time isn’t wasted.
By automating these smaller tasks your professionals can spend their saved time on more useful strategic tasks, such as forecasting and scenario modeling. Moreover, this helps reduce common errors in the reporting process, improving accuracy and reducing time spent correcting errors.
With integrated data, each department can easily generate reports in an instant, and thanks to AI-powered automation they don’t need any advanced understanding of data. This means that departments can collaborate easily, and everyone gets the same picture.
With more reporting happening, performance and projects can be better tracked. This allows for an organization to get a better idea of its finances, personnel, project statuses and more, allowing for strategy to be constantly reworked with the most current data.
When disruption strikes, time isn’t wasted on data consolidation, but with advanced report generation an organization can get a visibility of their current affairs quickly and with accuracy, allowing a more agile response.
How Unit4 can help you build agile operations
To discover more about how Unit4 ERP can help you with agile transformation, visit our website to read more blogs about our FP&A, HCM, and other products that integrate seamlessly to help meet your organization’s unique requirements.
Book a demo today to see how our ERP suite can help your organization.
