By Rodolfo Luís Pereira, Enterprise Solutions Director at Noesis
Enterprise software is no longer just ERP or CRM and has evolved into a set of solutions that, depending on the sector of activity, are indispensable for organizations. Blink IT, EasyVista, Esri, Infor, JP.DI, Microsoft, Noesis, Procensus Oak Peak, Qlik and SAS share their views on the enterprise software market
Organizations are evolving and, with them, their software. Companies no longer use only the 'simple' ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning, or Business Management System - or CRM - Customer Relationship Management, or Customer Relationship Management -, but a panoply of business applications that are each increasingly relevant.
With this software growth, other problems arise. Information silos are one of those challenges, but also the lack of training for employees, which can prevent you from making the most of the software.
ERP
ERP is still an important point in companies' enterprise software, but currently there are other applications that are indispensable for business. At the same time, the ERP is also becoming more flexible from the point of view of use.
Rodolfo Luís Pereira, Enterprise Solutions Director at Noesis, says that there are "various types of needs" in organizations that "do not necessarily orbit around ERP only". Currently, this type of software has to guarantee productivity, collaboration between different players and interoperability so that the various existing borders between applications are blurred.
Thus, explains the representative of Noesis, “talking only about ERP or the ease that it can be used, is also talking about how it fits into the organization as a whole, together with all other applications” that are present in the day-to-day business. “We went from a software experience aspect, in which it is important to have good usability, to a logic of almost organization experience in which everything has to talk to everything, and this is a great challenge to guarantee the interoperability of all systems”
Interoperability
As the number of applications grows, so does the importance of interoperability between them so that it is possible - in some way - to eliminate information silos.
Rodolfo Luís Pereira shares that Noesis, as an integrator, has a high demand, in addition to providing business solutions, which may or may not be supported by automation, to ensure communication between the various areas. It is necessary to “ensure that, from end-to-end, things flow and this is only possible with the capacity for integration”.
For this to happen, the tools must have API (Application Programming Interface) - which may not always work the way customers want - that bring challenges.
Although the clients are not all the same, the Enterprise Solutions Director says that “it is not possible to find a project in which it is not necessary to talk about integration and interoperability about applications, whether using more democratic tools and understanding everything that works and does not it works". Organizations need to have useful information for their business and seek - more and more - to reduce information silos, be they organizational or application, and to put data to work according to the business and not the other way around. It is important to remember, too, that data lakes only take value if they are put to work for what the companies' business objectives are, and there is nothing better than testing and making small pilots, and then climbing results and needs.
Customization
One of the distinguishing points of business software is its extensibility and ability to personalize. However, with the need to implement new versions in an increasingly accelerated manner, this customization does not always occur and, sometimes, opts for standardization.
According to Rodolfo Luís Pereira, from Noesis, customers have relied on ‘fail fast’. “Doing short projects, where technology is implemented, where results are tested and learned from, and if it doesn't work, it's exchanged for something else, but always supported by what the basic platforms have, or that can be extended with solutions - as connectors, plugins or widgets -, is where we see that customers have supported each other and do this work. At the same time, many of the manufacturers have brought to the market a rapid pacing of delivery of products and solutions, whether in SaaS or release models, we are no longer talking about waiting a year or more for a major release that brings a new set of things and where, in that interregnum, companies had to act, they had to develop”.
