Navigating the Evolution of ERP: Business Objectives, Research Extensions, and Digital Debt Management

Alfred Zhu, Director of Enterprise Applications and Services, The Middleby Corporation [NASDAQ: MIDD]

No one is a stranger to the term ERP in the business world. The Gartner Group first introduced it in the 1990s, but its roots can be traced back to the 1960s in the manufacturing industry.

Business Objectives First:

Nowadays, businesses have already looked beyond traditional ERP offerings, from engineering drawings to customer relationship management, from a single database to a comprehensive enterprise data lake, and from a local to a global best practice. However, everything still starts with business objectives; in other words, what do you want? Three big areas you might you’re yourself when discussing business leaders:

• Will the requirements get the business closer to the customers? It drives top-line numbers.

• Will the requirements help to drive operational efficiency? It drives the bottom-line numbers.

• Will the requirements help the business to get the new products out of the door sooner and better? - Both top line and bottom line.

Extend Your Research:

By looking into the above, we might have to extend the research and due diligence on what our partners use. What the customers and vendors are also looking for, and how can we add value to the entire value chain, digital transformation is a significant opportunity to streamline and simplify it.

Lower Your Digital Debt:

After understanding the business requirements and objectives, it is time to discuss the solution. Let the actual fun start! Legacy systems, old hardware, silos data marts…will they all work together?! You start having doubts: shall we go with the big names? Do we have more control over our destiny? What if the tool goes out of date in a few years? And how much money we can spend? All these questions could be overwhelming. One word you might be tired of hearing is the ecosystem. It can be broken down into functionality, technical stack, and data.