FEATURE : ERP SOFTWARE based solutions . “ Organisations still run disparate systems which creates silos of information lack the sufficient data visualisation tools to be able to make effective business decisions ,” he said .
He pointed out that ERP has been around for 30 years but today ’ s systems are unrecognisable compared to those of old and incredibly , many antiquated systems are still running too many of today ’ s companies .
At Infor , Alshami believes the challenges that enterprises face have been magnified by COVID-19 . He said last year served to highlight the challenges of trying to run a physical IT department / data centre and the direct advantages of embracing the cloud for running ERP . “ The problem for many IT heads is that while the need for solutions such as ERP has increased , budgets have also been tightened . In this context , one of the key challenges for enterprises – and more specifically CIOs – is finding a vendor who can commit to a rapid cloud deployment ; to an agreed budget in order to minimise the time to value ,” he said .
IFS ’ Khan explained that there ’ s an obvious benefit of shifting costs from CAPEX to OPEX with a cloud solution and there ’ s nothing new in that . “ What is new is the opportunity for customers to enjoy the same functionality with their cloud deployment as they would with an on-premise solution ,” he said . “ Using old applications costs too much . Customers want ease of deployment , they want ease of use and they want lower total cost of ownership .
“ Infor has invested over US $ 5 billion in research and development ( R & D ) to make its ERP out-of-the box ready for specific industries . This investment is relentless as industries continue to evolve , so the supporting ERP software must continue to maintain pace ,” he said . “ The newest ERP is multi-tenant cloud enabled ; deeply rich with industry specific functionality together with a modern , easy / fun to use User Interface .”
Going forward , Alshami said Infor is seeing demand for multi-tenant ERP ‘ in the cloud ’ in the Middle East . “ This provides customers with so much more than hosted solutions in the cloud . Customers are seeing the clear benefits of deeply rich industry specific functionality which Infor updates for them on a monthly basis , without them needing to schedule any more upgrades ,” he said .
“ Most recently , ASRY in Bahrain decided to take full advantage of a multi-tenant ERP deployment to handle their incredibly complex ship repair environment – projects of that scale don ’ t get much more complex than that .” p
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