Successful businesses have three main characteristics: the right personnel, great processes, and systems that enable people to make excellent decisions.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) help businesses perform more efficiently and effectively in many areas, including:
Tracking business resources
Analyzing customer behavior
Managing information flow
Maximizing your people’s efficiencies
Connecting people and functions
ERP features are imperative for integrating business functions, streamlining processes, reducing information silos, and facilitating effective decision making.
In this blog post, we focus on a key feature that is often overlooked: Search.
Why Is Search Capability An Important Feature?
Search capability has a strong say in how agile a business’ operations are. Nothing slows down processes like a cumbersome search tool. A crucial feature for an ERP is comprehensive and speedy search to find items fast, like customer information, sales orders, job statuses, invoices, and purchase orders.
For example, the ERP systems of some organizations have different screens full of fields related to sales orders. If an employee has to edit a specific sales order, finding it can be a real hassle and a time-consuming endeavor if the system is not equipped with efficient search capability.
But with a good system in place, a person can just type in some keywords, and the screen will take them directly to their desired result. A customer may call and ask, “What’s the status of order number 10203?” A strong search would allow for the employee to type 10203 or a part of the customer’s name, and all the information would quickly appear right in front of them.
Taking it a step further, there are ERP systems with even sharper capabilities that allow employees to track changes in specific orders by tagging them. If you want to be updated whenever there are changes to a specific sales order, this tagging functionality will provide notifications to you immediately.
Do All ERP’s Have The Same Search Capabilities?
No.
Not all ERPs have the same capabilities, as some are better than others, depending on features. For example, some ERP’s have an auto-fill feature similar to Google searches. It analyzes what you are searching for in near real-time while you are typing and keeps changing its recommendations as you type more.
In addition, search capability doesn’t vary much among industries. If we look at distributors, manufacturers, and membership associations, the difference lies more in the types of searches versus search capability.
What Risk Is There For A Company That Doesn’t Invest in Strong Search?
Poor customer service. Frustrated staff. Lower efficiency.
If a business lacks an efficient search system, you’ll keep customers waiting while you try each search scenario to finally find the information that concerns them. You should instead be equipped with an ERP that allows you to quickly find any information and allows you to easily search using normal language and not some code that you don’t use in any other environment. It’s best to understand the full capacity and limitations of an ERP system search capabilities before you commit to a license and implement it.
From processing customer orders to managing supply chain and budgeting, an ERP gives business owners the big-picture view they need to run their company. Strong search capabilities are essential for the growth and expansion of a business.
Results Technology Group provides technology services to our clients with best-in-class software selection, project management, and business technology leadership services. To learn more about how we can help you make a great software decision, schedule a free 30-minute technology discussion.