We’ve been celebrating the 20th anniversary of Ultra Consultants founding and considering ERP. It’s a milestone that provides a good opportunity to celebrate our successes, as well as consider the evolving ERP landscape.
Please see our previous post which takes stock of how ERP has evolved over the last two decades within the manufacturing sector.
We asked ERP expert and thought leader Cindy Jutras to share her perspectives as to the changes that have taken place in enterprise software.
Cindy Jutras, founder and president of Mint Jutras, is a widely recognized expert in analyzing the impact of enterprise applications on business performance. Utilizing close to 40 years of corporate experience and specific expertise in manufacturing, supply chain, customer service and business performance management, Cindy has spent the past 8 years benchmarking the performance of software solutions in the context of the business benefits of technology.
Prior to founding Mint Jutras, Cindy was Vice President, Research Fellow and Group Director for the Aberdeen Group where she conducted survey-based research on ERP, suite-based enterprise applications and business performance management. During her tenure with Aberdeen she directly managed a variety of research practices including Enterprise Applications and ERP, Manufacturing, Product Innovation and Engineering, GRC and Financial Management, Strategic Service Management and Human Capital Management.
We’re grateful to Cindy for sharing the following perspectives:
Q: Over the decades you’ve been involved in ERP and enterprise software systems, what have been some of the more noteworthy changes you’ve seen in the ERP sector?
A: “If you look back over the last four decades, you realize enterprise software has come a very long way. Back 40 years ago, virtually all business applications were custom developed. Nobody believed a “packaged” application could ever meet the needs of even a small to mid-size business. So the first big advance was along those lines – packaged software that was at least “close enough” to serve as a starting point. But those early applications were rudimentary, hard to use and usually wound up being highly customized with invasive code changes that built in barriers to upgrades and innovation.
“Through the years the most notable technological changes addressing these limitations included service oriented architecture, object-oriented data models, event-driven and/or message-based technology, semantic layers, rules engines, HTML5 and XML. What all these boil down to are new ways of engaging with ERP, ease of configuration versus customization, better integration capabilities and new ways of delivering innovation.
“Throughout this evolution there was a definite process orientation – the goal was to streamline and automate business processes. Now we’re seeing a shift in thinking from “process” to “data” for decision-making. Processes are still important, but many have already been fully automated, some to the point of no human interaction at all. Now the biggest “game changers” are in-memory computing, cloud and mobility. In-memory computing allows us to process and analyze data in volumes that would have previously been impossible to deal with. Cloud provides “access anywhere, any time” and mobility extends that access to smart phones and tablets. Suddenly you have a previously unprecedented level of access to data for decision-making. And this data is put directly in the hands of both strategic and tactical decision-makers.”
Evolving ERP – What’s Ahead?
As independent ERP consultants, we realize it’s a challenge to anticipate the technological shifts to come especially with advances in cloud, social collaboration, BYOD and other key technological evolutions.
What will impact mid-market manufacturers and distributors is their ability to leverage technology for business process improvement that improves their competitive position and overall business performance.
We extend our sincere thanks to Ultra’s customers, consulting team and partners as we reflect on our 20-year anniversary and head into the next chapter.
We also thank Cindy for sharing her thoughts. See additional insights from Cindy via her blog.
Please share some of your observations about this changing market in the comments section below. Watch for further reflections on Ultra’s two-decade legacy.
Contact Ultra Consultants for further insight into your ERP evolution.
Other Articles of Interest
Evolving ERP: Celebrating 20 Years of Business Performance…
Manufacturing ERP in 2014 – What Can We Expect?
Infor Vendor Briefing Part 2: Product Developments
ERP Systems and Manufacturing: Here They Grow
Cloud ERP for Manufacturing is Reaching New Heights