Is your ERP the right solution for your teams?

Your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution might appear to be a desirable option for your teams with its ‘all-in-one’ features and functionality. But this may not be the case. Even though you’ve used it for a long-time, it may not contain the depth of a best-of-breed, specialist spend control solution. From implementation costs to your ERP’s limitations, you could be holding your organisation back from increasing compliance, control, and potential savings.

Why your ERP might not be enough

Your ERP system may not be as effective as you once thought, for several key reasons:

Lack of agility: All-in-one systems often sacrifice flexibility, making it hard to adapt quickly.
Limited access: Can everyone who needs to buy goods and services actually use the ERP?
Information gaps: Critical data, such as supplier qualifications, contracts and RFx documents, is often stored outside the ERP.
Lack of guidance: A specialised spend control system can guide users through key processes like self-service purchasing or complex RFx workflows.
Rigid workflows: Unlike ERPs, best-of-breed solutions offer configurable workflows and business rules essential for effective spend control.

Ultimately, spend control processes and the supporting system are largely outside the scope of most ERP systems. During our Navigating spend control transformation webinar, James Arvin, Director of UK Public Sector & Higher Education from leading ERP-provider Unit4, explained that: "There isn't a system in the world that can do everything, certainly not everything well. And that's where, from a Unit4 perspective, key partnerships with organisations like Proactis really come to the forefront. And having integrated, complementary sets of technology can enable the bringing together of not just the technology, but the business processes and people."

The good news is that you can deploy highly effective spend control around just about any core financial management or ERP system. In fact, it makes good sense to use a spend control system that is outside the bounds of ERP for two important reasons:

Spend control is about managing business processes that are outside the realm of ERP

For instance, it manages the processes before a PO or invoice hits ERP and before a supplier is added to ERP. And it uses a whole new range of information about suppliers, RFPs, contracts and catalogues that is not even in your ERP system.

Spend control involves many more people than those who use ERP

Parts of your system will be used by practically every employee. Other parts will be used by your suppliers who are outside the four walls of your organisation.

Because the business processes are so different, and because so many people will always be ‘non-expert’ users, the nature of a good spend control system is quite different from the nature of most ERP systems. Modern spend control systems have been designed to remove complexity and guide users through intuitive step-by-step processes – a different approach to the transaction processing model within most ERP systems.

The bottom line

Your ERP is a valuable asset, but it is not designed to manage every aspect of spend control effectively. While ERP is the path of least resistance, there are a number of considerations why best-of-breed, specialist solutions, such as Proactis, could be a better fit.

By integrating a dedicated spend control platform, your organisation can increase agility, improve compliance, and drive significant cost savings - all without the need for a disruptive ERP replacement.

We can help you to decide whether ERP is the right solution for your teams.

Drop us a line today