The first car at the turn of the last century could go about 20 kilometers per hour. Today, we drive electric cars that accelerate from 0 to 100 in 3 seconds. Technological development has advanced even faster than that. Over the last 10-15 years, an increasing number of business processes have been digitalized, which has further accelerated the pace of development. This has also led to changes in ERP systems. They have evolved from large and standardized to smart and, in the best cases, uniquely designed to create as much business value as possible.
– The transition from having the ERP system on-premises to in the cloud was an important technical breakthrough. The next step in the evolution is currently underway – from ready-made systems in the form of cloud services, SaaS, we are now moving towards more and more companies developing their own ERP systems that are built to create business value and streamline work processes, says Mårten Nilsson, business architect and CEO of The ERP Company.
The history of the ERP system goes all the way back to the 1960s when IBM, together with manufacturing companies, developed systems to keep track of inventory and production. In the 1990s, the term Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, was coined to describe how companies in all industries began implementing systems to control various processes within their operations.
In the 2000s, the internet enabled systems to gather data from other sources, leading to large databases with information that generate reports highlighting the results of every aspect of the business, from sales and marketing to product development, HR, and operations. However, the consequence was often that the organization stood on the sidelines, trying to perform the same work that the system was doing.
– A large portion of ERP systems sold today are ready-made cloud service solutions with varying possibilities for customization and integrating multiple systems. Many companies believe that these cloud-based systems can be adapted to their own operations to a greater extent than is actually possible. This often results in companies having several different systems that cannot communicate with each other, leading to time-consuming manual work that the system should perform automatically.
– They focus on technology instead of the business when implementing a new system, but technology is just the tool being used; business development should always be the primary focus.
More and more companies are building their own systems
If the move of ERP systems from on-premises to the cloud was an important technical breakthrough, the paradigm shift of more companies developing their own ERP systems is an equally significant development.
– As technological development and best practices allow for cost-effective and simple coding, combined with the digital maturity of Swedish companies, custom-developed systems are becoming a given. These systems then support all parts of the business, allowing companies to optimize work processes and streamline the entire business model.
– AI is a factor that will increasingly contribute to making it even faster and cheaper to build custom systems. The AI tools that have emerged in recent years can create, validate, and explain code. This greatly streamlines the development work, enabling us to focus on creating business value together with the companies rather than writing code.
For Mårten Nilsson, it’s obvious that more companies will see the advantages of developing their own ERP systems that they can shape and adapt to their unique business model and ways of working.
– It will only become even easier and cheaper to develop custom systems. Add to that the fact that companies are becoming increasingly technically competent in their requirements, with a greater understanding of how the system needs to support the business, and we see a future where custom-developed ERP systems are a given for all companies that want to continue to evolve, grow, and make their business model as profitable as possible.
