Some considerations of the hybrid ERP integration

 

Enterprise resource planning systems are among the most useful technologies available to modern enterprises. By incorporating multiple data sources and integrating with current systems, organizations can use ERP to predict key industry trends, ensure customers are being taken care of and manage their supply chains more effectively.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest advantages of deploying an integrated, hybrid ERP solution within the enterprise IT environment:

Benefits of the cloud-based ERP

Cloud technology has become a household term. RightScale’s 2017 State of the Cloud report found that 28 percent of enterprises are cloud-focused, meaning their adoption of the cloud has reached the maximum maturity level. What’s more, 85 percent of them have a multi-cloud strategy, meaning they’re leveraging more than one public, private or hybrid environment.

Many organizations are using the cloud to become more agile, respond to situations quickly and generally improve their competitive advantages in their respective industries.

Here are only a few of the top advantages of the cloud and cloud-based ERP:

Increase agility
According to Inspirage’s 2016 major market research study, 68 percent of enterprises view the opportunity to improve agility as a leading factor in cloud adoption. When ERP tools are connected via the cloud, it becomes easier to spread information across disparate locations and between teams.

Cut costs
Cloud deployments are generally thought of as operational expenditures (pay-as-you-go cost structure) instead of capital expenditures (one large up-front cost). The low entry cost for cloud computing, therefore, is attractive to companies that don’t necessarily want to spend the up-front capital on setting up their own servers.

Gain ROI
The return on investment achieved from deploying cloud solutions is especially important with ERP systems. First, however, organizations have to set up quantifiable targets by looking at current metrics and determining what they want to achieve.

Agility is massively important to most organizations.Agility is massively important to most organizations.

 

Benefits of on-premises ERP

There are several advantages of having on-premises ERP systems, as well. For example, enterprises define their own security strategies and exercise more control over their servers if everything is deployed locally.

According to SoftwareAdvice.com contributor Forrest Burnson, while cloud systems are more cost-effective and typically take less time to implement, the trade-off with on-premises ERP is that these local solutions are more customizable. Some organizations also find that since they can define their own security protocols, they have more control over their data in the long run.

The importance of integration

At the end of the day, deploying a hybrid ERP strategy that utilizes the advantages of both cloud and on-premises environments is one of the best ways to fully embrace cloud technologies and improve responsiveness to industry trends, customer demands and supply chain challenges. Integrating on-premises ERP systems with cloud-based tools can improve your organization’s agility and customizability. However, according to the 2016 Inspirage market report, integration remains the No. 1 obstacle to migrating services to the cloud.

CIO contributor Michael Nadeau noted that in order to meet the challenges of integration, enterprises are creating a more deliberate hybrid ERP strategy and incorporating it within the planning process. This process includes best practices for vetting, connecting, deploying and testing solutions within the enterprise.

“Cloud applications can be relatively easy, low-cost solutions, but they do introduce new complexities when they need to be integrated with on-premise ERP systems and databases, or with each other,” Nadeau wrote. “Ensuring that cloud and on-premise systems play nice together is just one part of the hybrid challenge. Making the right decisions about what will be in the cloud and what stays in-house is the other.”

The experts at Inspirage can help organizations choose, build and deploy their Oracle ERP Cloud solutions in 90 days or less. Our iHub CS solution is specifically designed to migrate data and manage integrations across a variety of platforms. For more information about our rapid start solutions, get in touch today.

Keith Rust | Key Contributor

Keith Rust is the Solutions Manager in the Innovation Management practice at Inspirage. Keith has over 15 years of functional and technical Agile PLM experience, specializing in Product Collaboration, Product Quality Management, and the Agile Integration Framework. Keith has helped over 125 companies with various aspects of Agile implementations in medical device, semiconductor, hi-tech, pharmaceutical, aerospace, automotive, solar and telecommunications industries. He is also a regular contributor to various Agile PLM user groups.