The maturation of (ERP) systems has delivered many benefits. A few examples are increased processing power, improved reporting tools and intuitive user interfaces. But the most significant is one that historically was the least implemented, which is to reduce manual and redundant entry of both financial and nonfinancial data.
Today’s systems provide the ability to integrate disparate systems which reduces valuable time and errors. Many of our clients’ have engaged to implement integration of data from banks, vendors, customers, point of sale and other billing systems. These engagements typically return a very high return of the client’s investment.
A relatively new feature of Dynamics GP allows other employees in the organization to reduce the burden on the current ERP system users in two ways:
- Eliminates or greatly reduces responses to employee inquiries
- Eliminates or greatly reduces time spent on the manual entry of employee provided information
These benefits will result from the implementation of .
A Self Service User allows the employee/user to:
- Inquire of payroll or human resource related information and
- Initiate purchase requisitions
These processes in most organizations are labor intensive and time consuming which can also lead to inaccuracies and errors. The costs can be very high but unfortunately since these costs have always been present many organizations have not perceived these areas as priorities. This has caused me to come up with a new twist on the old saying, "if it is not broken, then do not fix it." In this case, it seems the idea is, if it has always been broken, then do not fix it. We seem to accept those situations rather than invest in improving the process and/or the system to support the process.
You might be wondering why I entitled this blog article, “Closing the Loop with Self Service Users.” We have all found ways to automate and streamline many of the processes we have historically done electronically in our ERP systems, but now we have the opportunity to add the multitude of currently disconnected stakeholders to our ERP system to greatly reduce costs. We should all seriously consider self service users and the benefits to our respective organizations.
to discuss Microsoft Dynamics GP Functionality and how your organization can benefit from it.
Written by Bruce Lane of Vertical Solutions -
