How ERP Makes SOP Implementation Easier and More

Effective

As successful leaders know, in order to build a business that scales, well-

documented systems and processes are a must. From training and hiring to
work policies and procedures, standard operating procedures (SOPs) help
organisations stay organised, streamline business processes, and ensure that
employees understand how to accomplish assigned tasks to the expected
standard in the most efficient manner possible.

In a manufacturing environment, for example, SOPs are imperative to ensure

uniform results, quality control, traceability, and employee safety. In other
industries where regulatory compliance is a requirement — pharmaceuticals,
medical devices, chemical plants, etc. — SOPs are nothing short of essential.

As such, the appropriate and effective management of SOPs is imperative for

ensuring that all members of your organisation are operating from a
formalised and coordinated set of processes that not only increase
productivity, but reduce the risk of errors, establish a chain of command, and
see to it that all regulatory requirements are met.

This means that SOPs need to be documented — and those documents

stored and made easily accessible to all team members. In addition, SOPs
themselves must be regularly revisited, reviewed and updated to ensure they
are keeping up with any new working procedures, developments, or regulatory
requirements that are put in place. Again, this requires the implementation of
appropriate SOP management tools that easily enable regular SOP update
and review. Using an advanced ERP system like metasfresh is one of the best
ways to do this, for indeed, ERP software is purpose-built to record, store, and
disseminate required information across the organisation and facilitate
operational best practices, collaboration, and decision-making.

The Benefits of ERP-SOP Integration

Of course, SOPs can be implemented without an ERP, but the process of
deriving what information is required, when and by whom to successfully
complete an organisational activity becomes easier and far more effective
when it is integrated directly with a centralised, overarching, comprehensive
information system.
Traditional methods for implementing SOPs typically involve things like
providing SOP handbooks or manuals, or through training and educational
programmes. This is fine in theory, but, particularly for scaling organisations
and organisations with multiple interdepartmental dependencies, moving
parts, and process improvement requirements, these traditional methods lack
the flexibility, versatility, and accessibility required to ensure that SOPs are
always up to date and accurately disseminated throughout the organisation to
optimise the functioning of processes.

A far more advanced and impactful way of implementing SOPs is by having a

powerful and robust ERP such as metasfresh in place, and integrating the
SOPs directly with the system. The ultimate purpose of an ERP is to combine
all aspects of an organisation into a single database, application, and user
interface. Organisations utilise ERP software to manage their various and
wide-spread business functions — from finance and accounting to supply
chain management, procurement, sales, marketing, human resources, and
business intelligence — from within a centralised, integrated system. SOPs,
meanwhile, clearly establish roles, responsibilities, process owners, chains of
command, workflows, and approvals processes within these functions,
providing immense clarity and standardising all procedures. In other words,
ERP is the technology used to drive business processes, while SOPs give
those processes clear direction and purpose.

Integrating SOPs directly with an ERP like metasfresh means that the ERP
system itself can be designed and customised from the ground up in direct
accordance with your predefined best practice operational procedures, and
ensure that the information needs involved with each of your business
processes are met. Indeed, ERP-SOP integration ensures that your
operational best practice approaches are mapped right into your core
information and business process management system. What’s more, the
ERP system’s information sharing capabilities provides ready access to all
SOP documents, facilitating consistency, accuracy and promptness to the
operational activities being carried out by employees engaged in various
business processes.

Integrate Your SOPs with metasfresh Open

Source ERP
Fundamentally, SOPs are all about improving your business. They clearly
communicate the correct way of carrying out an activity within an organisation,
and should be crafted to ensure the achievement of optimised standards of
performance and output at the operational level. With effective ERP-SOP
integration, these standards can be mapped against each activity right inside
the ERP information system, providing a robust platform for improving
consistency, minimising errors, streamlining operations and facilitating greater
collaboration between departments.

In short, the integration of ERP and your SOPs enable you to attain the very
best of both worlds. While your SOPs provide the standards and the roadmap
that will guide your organisation towards optimised operational activities, an
ERP system provides the platform and functional tools to ensure the
implementation and execution of your SOPs in practice.

Are You Using ERP to Improve Your

Business?
Imagine trying to run your busy, modern life without your smartphone. You
wouldn’t be able to read your boss’s morning briefing during your commute to
work. Nor listen to your favourite podcasts, arrange meetings with colleagues,
check your bank balance, pay your bills, consult bus and train timetables,
exchange communications and documents with co-workers, customers and
suppliers, or look ahead at the day’s work schedule.

To do any of these things without your smartphone — and countless others

besides — you’d need to be sat at a computer with an internet connection. In
short, you’d be at a serious disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.
For of course, we live in a world of smartphones — and just because you
haven’t got one, doesn’t mean that nobody else has. And so, while everybody
around you is up to speed and constantly connected to everyone and
everything they need to get things done no matter where they are, you’re left
behind in the dark.

Now imagine trying to run a successful, modern business without a

dependable, efficient, and constantly connected solution that keeps track of all
company information, activities, and moving parts. Without a system that
facilitates instant communication between employees, customers, suppliers,
and other stakeholders. Without a programme that connects all of your
organisation’s departments — finance, accounting, procurement, inventory,
distribution, HR, project management, sales, marketing — allowing them to
work together from the same, dependable information.
Imagine, in the modern world, where such solutions exist, and a growing
number of your competitors are reaping the full benefits of them, your
organisation is left flailing behind in the dark.

This, indeed, is precisely why so many of today’s successful businesses use

Enterprise Resource Planning software solutions like metasfresh ERP — and
why, if you’re involved in running and growing a modern business, you should
be using one, too.

What Is ERP?
The global ERP software market is expected to reach $70.3 billion by 2025,
according to recent figures from KBV Research, rising at a market growth of
10.5% CAGR during the forecast period. Clearly, there is a growing demand
for ERP — but what is an ERP system exactly, what does it do, and why is it
proving so beneficial to so many businesses?

Global ERP Software Market Size —Source: kbvresearch.com

Well, as KBV Research puts it:

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) refers to business

process management software that enables enterprises to
use integrated application systems to manage business
and automate certain product, technology and human
resources related back office functions. ERP software
combines all aspects of an organization into a single
database, application, and user interface, including
product development, manufacturing, product planning,
sales, and marketing. It also provides a degree of
structured monitoring and automation. Instead of requiring
employees to keep different databases and spreadsheets
that need to be combined manually to produce
documents, ERP systems allow employees to extract
reports from one process.KBV Research
Got that?

The Benefits of ERP

Essentially, ERP software is composed of powerful and strategic business

process management tools that organizations use to manage their various
and wide-spread business functions from within a centralized, integrated
system. This includes everything from finance and accounting to supply chain
management, human resources, and business intelligence.

metasfresh ERP is one such system — an agile, flexible, and scalable over-
arching programme that organizations use to keep constant track of
everything that’s going on within the company and connect all departments
and moving parts together. Combining analytics, automation, and big data,
metasfresh ERP integrates all facets of an enterprise into one, comprehensive
information system that all members of the organisation can access, giving
real-time visibility into the inner workings of business operations.

In practice, this means that all employees across all departments can rely on
the same, up-to-date information to work from — and not worry about
anything getting lost in some poorly maintained, inscrutable spreadsheet.
What’s more, our open source ERP solution not only gives organisations the
helicopter view of what’s happening, it also allows them to automate and
streamline back office tasks — from generating employee schedules to
issuing invoices and performing data entry — helping employees become
more productive in their roles and unburdening them from repetitive, manual
duties.

Streamline Operations
For example, let’s say a sales representative receives an order from a
customer. metasfresh ERP will automatically send that information to the
distribution centre that is best placed to complete the order in a timely
manner. It does so by scanning inventory levels, shipment times, and other
factors to decide which distribution centre would be most productive — and
cost-effective — in completing that order. Imagine all the calls, and all the
digging through files to try and find this information manually — all the while
your customer is waiting to know how long it will take to fulfil their order. With
a powerful ERP system like metasfresh, all the information any member of the
workforce needs is right at their fingertips.

And this is just one example. metasfresh ERP can be easily configured to
automatically reorder materials as soon as stock levels reach a certain
threshold, ensuring you never experience either out-of-stock or overstocked
incidences. Repetitive HR tasks like employee scheduling, tracking absences,
and managing leave can all also be automated to save time.

When it comes to project management, our ERP solution provides users with
an accurate, real-time overview of entire product life cycles — meaning your
organisation can oversee not only what’s happening in the supply chain, but
day-to-day production as well. And, of course, our system will manage all of
your business accounting requirements — including budgeting, recording
transactions, and measuring cash flow — giving you the complete, up-to-the-
minute picture of your company’s financial health and allowing your finance
team to balance the books in seconds.

Final Thoughts
In order to compete successfully in the modern business environment,
organisations need technology solutions to connect departments, increase
productivity, improve customer service, identify flawed processes, and
leverage operational data to support decision-making.
ERP software does it all and more besides — which is why today’s top
solutions like metasfresh are playing a vital role in helping companies future-
proof their operations, achieve their business goals, and realise growth and
success.

If your workforce is spending too much time on processes that can be

automated, if you don’t have easy access to the data you need to make
informed business decisions, if you don’t know what your inventory levels look
like on a daily basis, if your teams can’t easily share information and
collaborate together, or if you’re struggling to integrate numerous software
tools and processes into one all-seeing and -doing comprehensive system
— it’s time you spoke to us here at metasfresh.

Since 2006, we have been developing our metasfresh ERP software non-
stop with open source components and under the open source licenses
GPLv2 and GPLv3. Our mission is to enable each and every company to
access a powerful ERP system with the aim of fuelling corporate
growth. Get in touch today for more information and insights.