Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 05 | Page 15

LATEST INTELLIGENCE Connect, Collaborate, Innovate: The business benefits of social ERP Unlock the potential of your people Innovation: every organization needs it if they want to become, or remain, a market leader. This has never been truer than it is now, with increasing globalization and stiffer competition making the need for differentiation more pressing than ever. By enabling employees from all areas of your organization to collaborate you can increase the level of innovation you see in your organization—especially in areas such as customer service and supplier communications. The trouble for many organizations, however, is that persistent information silos and a lack of tools to enable effective collaboration limits their ability to innovate. Social ERP: a missed opportunity? Modern ERP systems are embracing the concept of ‘social ERP’— that is, ERP interfaces built using concepts borrowed from social media to create truly collaborative workplaces. Though organizations are well aware of the need for collaboration in their business, they don’t always realize the role ERP can play in the process: in a recent survey, we found that just 10% of respondents believed that ERP can exploit social media to a great extent. In this eBook, we’ll take a closer look at how social ERP can fuel innovation by becoming the backbone of a collaborative environment that spans your entire organization, and encompasses your customers and suppliers. Do CFOs have the tools they need to make the best decisions for business growth? Executive summary Did you know that 46 percent of CFOs are making important decisions based only on instinct? And, that a third of companies cite not having access to internal data quickly enough as a key cause of decisionmaking mistakes? These were just a few of the insights revealed by Epicor Software Corporation’s latest research into the decisionmaking challenges CFOs and financial decisionmakers face, especially when it comes to the role IT systems play in the process. The picture painted is complex: while CFOs value their instinct and intuition in the decision-making process, they’re increasingly being used to make decisions that should be made based on hard facts. The primary culprit seems to be inadequate IT systems: 60 percent of CFOs and financial decision-makers still rely on Excel spreadsheets to interpret data, suggesting that their current systems are unable to give them the insight they need. Crucially, the survey showed that profits increased for the majority of organisations who had managed to overcome these challenges. In this ebook, we’ll look at the results of the survey in closer detail and explore how a modern financial IT infrastructure, which delivers the right data to the right people and at the right time, can help CFOs and financial decisionmakers back up instinct with relevant data they can rely on to help their businesses grow. Download white papers free from www.intelligentcio.com/me/whitepapers/ www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 15