Innovation is key to survival
CLOUD, big data, the growing need for mobility, increasing competition and other trends are posing challenges for software suppliers and requiring them to be more innovative.
Simon Carpenter, chief customer officer at SAP, says in the future an increasing number of companies will get service providers to run their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for them and access them more like a utility.
This will drive the need for ERP systems to allow users to tap into information, process transactions and perform analytics from mobile devices.
There will also be a growing need to integrate ERP with big data, for example to allow users to get answers to random questions on the fly, combine ERP data with social media and get more insight into the supply chain.
“ERP in itself is a massive source of data,” says Carpenter.
He says customers are even looking at hiring data scientists to find patterns in data.
Rob Bothma, industry specialist for HCM solutions at NGA Africa, says the data stored in accounting, ERP and payroll systems is richer than that held in any other systems, because companies are required by law to keep the data for seven years.
“This provides an opportunity to analyse the data, for example to identify trends, and the newer service providers are building dashboard facilities to enable customers to do this.”
Steven Cohen, MD of Sage Pastel, says in five years’ time most accounting and ERP software will be totally cloud based, because the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
However, it is difficult to just move traditional desktop systems to the cloud because of their rich functionality which has been developed over the past 20 years or more.
So suppliers are developing capabilities to allow the most relevant data to be shared between their desktop systems and the cloud while they develop new web-based solutions.
“Desktop accounting solutions offer 40% more features than cloud solutions, but they are filled with features only 5% of customers are using.”
Jane Thomson, MD of Softworx, says the newer ERP systems are designed to be more open and friendly, enabling third-party specialist applications to interconnect with them.
This might include a sales catalogue application that allows customers to buy products online from a mobile device and the information is automatically fed into the workflow of the ERP system.
Other possibilities include monitoring factory equipment, scheduling maintenance, initiating quality checking procedures and scheduling and receiving alerts about hitches in the workflow process.
Gary Epstein, MD of QuickBooks, says the functionality of accounting systems is nearing its peak, but over the next five years a lot more of it will be delivered over the internet.
Users can also expect products to work faster and more efficiently, for example requiring two steps instead of six steps to complete a function.
“We are already seeing progress in this direction and the latest products reflect this.”
Stephen Corrigan, MD of Palladium Software, says companies running traditional systems based on old technology will run into difficulties next year when the Protection of Personal Information Act comes into force.
The act will require companies to protect data, but old databases do not have the security mechanisms to do that, and data is easily corrupted.
Says Corrigan: “The older database technologies allow unfettered data access to anyone with administration rights.”
Sandra Swanepoel sales director at Sage VIP, says five years from now there will be fewer software suppliers in the market, as those that cannot deliver easy-to-use cloud solutions that make data available on any device fall by the wayside.
“The latest web-based software solutions are more intuitive to users’ needs and are easier to implement.”