Poor decision-making, the critical barrier to growth - manufacturers

The white paper, In Pursuit of Operational Excellence: Accelerating Business Change Through Next Generation ERP, highlights that in order to achieve growth, manufacturers need to analyse all available information to maximise visibility and intelligence, and assess resulting impacts on the business. However, inadequate systems and poor data and partner integration are roadblocks to improved decision-making.

Business processes and IT systems a restriction

The white paper highlights that business processes and IT systems currently restrict the decision-making necessary for operational excellence, according to 60% of manufacturers, with a lack of collaborative social-networking style features in ERP systems in particular failing to create the right decision-making environment. When asked for a wish-list of features, manufacturers cite faster business processes, real-time information and collaboration as key to improved working practices and better decisions.

According to the survey, the barriers to better decision-making vary across industries, with aerospace and industrial machinery industries ranking disparate data across multiple systems as the main challenge. Automotive companies point to inadequate partner integration, while the high-tech electronics sector blames a lack of, or inaccurate, data.

Sharply moving up the agenda

Collaboration and social networking has sharply moved up manufacturers' agendas. While not yet considered the main limitation - only 4% ranked it first place - across all rankings it emerged as the second most significant limitation of existing ERPs, heralding a new place for social ERP in the workplace for business productivity reasons.

The research was conducted in October 2011 among manufacturers in the United States, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Australia, China, India, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Russia.