HomeBlogInventory Management Software or ERP For Your Organization ?
Inventory Management Software or ERP For Your Organization ?
Posted on June 7 2019
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Within a company, resource management is an important part to consider in order to minimize the loss of money and time invested. This begins with an effective inventory management. Indeed, regardless of whether it is a small start-up or a large global organization, the lack of a rigorous hardware tracking system is unacceptable in the competitive environment we live in today.
In order to do this and to keep in mind the objectives that an organization defines, there comes a time when it begins to evaluate the options to improve productivity while freeing certain tasks and automating these processes.
The list of software choices that follow is often long and tedious, some may seem attractive for their low cost and others may be more interesting because they offer more features.
Among those choices, there is the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), but what is it exactly ?
What is an ERP ?
An ERP software, as the name suggests is a business resource management software, also known as “Integrated Management Software” (ERP). Its particularity is to centralize within the same database all the tools needed to manage a company while optimizing the entire production chain.
It is a versatile tool that allows for resource planning, reduced production costs and increased productivity. In the same software, an ERP can gather together all the different modules of management, accounting, production, sales / CRM, stocks, etc. and homogenize everything to create a central unit. These modules are interconnected and complementary and allow each application to connect and communicate with each other.
In addition, an ERP is mainly designed to support companies in their financial tasks, accounting communicates with project planning, supply and inventory control in order to increase productivity, project profitability, traceability and to reduce the heaviness of these.
ERP software for the inventory management ?
Unlike software specialized in tracking and loaning hardware like Hector, our asset management software, an ERP software will not only offer an inventory-based module, but the entire information system of the company to know :
Purchasing, Reception, Orders
Finance and Accounting
Dashboards and KPIs
Customer & Supplier Management
Employees
Project Management
Thus, for a company whose main interest is the monitoring and equipment management and that wishes to take advantage of the benefits of an asset management software, an ERP will not be fully appropriate. Indeed, as explained in the video below by Tracy Smith, president of SwainSmith, an ERP will offer a powerful management solution for organizational resources and data centralization but whose inventory module will be limited in functionality.
While from the point of view of an automated asset management software, it has a more specialized field of action such as :
Software with the capacity of tracking any kind of equipment and administer internal loans in the company.
Keep track of the assets in stockrooms, in circulation and reparation
Can be used in multiple places, at the same time with our Cloud database solution
Can be used with multiple devices (computers, pads, smartphones) directly onto our webpage, which is adapted to the format and loading speed of the device used
Can generate asset reports (New asset purchase, Asset life span, Loaners usage report, Assets lost/consumed..) to facilitate budgets setting
Assign assets to employee/sites as for the loan module for users.
Therefore, what you need to know is that an asset management software and, an ERP, are not interchangeable but are compatible. These work better together rather than as competitors. You must take advantage of the benefits they can, both, bring to your organization !
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