Cuong, director of a wood trading company, takes a sip of coffee while reading the report on the company’s business on his smartphone. The adoption of corporate resource management solutions has made life easier for the leaders of this company, as they can now work at a café or access business data online.

Reading reports at home

With ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)  solutions,  corporate  leaders  will no longer have to wait for reports from various departments. Business data and financial  statements  run  smoothly  on the system. Any numbers they need are available thanks to the integration of the report module Business Intelligence (BI) into ERP.

Some  corporate  leaders  used  to  be very passive, always relying on the departments that gathered the data before a periodical report could be submitted. Requirements from the leadership could not be met in time, and thus making it dif  cult for companies to come up with investment  decisions  and  expand  production.

Although  the  report  module  is  only one  component  of  the  ERP  system,  it combines  separate  reports,  offering CEOs a comprehensive view. BI enables the connection and use of data from various  corporate  resource  management systems  such  as  HCM  (Human  Capital Management),  Customer  Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

How to use ERP reasonably

The use of ERP helps enterprises control  and  utilize  their  resources  (human resources,  finance  and  purchase  procedures, etc.) in the most reasonable way by  virtue  of  business  processes  set  in the  system.  Typically,  these  processes arise from real needs of enterprises and are screened for the best practices from those who have successfully applied ERP. 

Consultants  on  the  adoption  of  such system share the view that it is extremely important to select ERP solutions that agree with one’s business characteristics and  model.  Highend  ERP  solutions  do not necessarily boost a company’s business. One may consider the scale of their company’s  operations  before  picking suitable ERP solutions.

In some ERP solutions, flexibility plays a vital role in helping companies expand the scope of their application or form of organization (setting up more subsidiaries, for example). The issue of system expansion according to the development of the company should be discussed during the meeting with consultancy units. 

For instance, enterprises may expand the scale in line with the form of organization  (such  as  from  one  company  to five), or scope of application (from only the accounting department to many other departments using ERP solutions). The enlargement of the number of users will have nothing to do with the ERP system (like  how  the  calculation  of  wages  will remain unchanged when the number of employees increases from 500 to 1,000). 

Vu Dinh Thang, deputy general director in charge of ERP of Global Cybersoft (one of the first companies in Vietnam to provide enterprises with ERP consultancy  and  deployment),  says  ERP  consultants may give forecasts whereby enterprises  can  timely  convert  and  improve their infrastructure meeting the need to upgrade the system. ERP solutions may be  flexibly  altered  and  upgraded  in  a customized  way  to  cater  for  the  development needs of enterprises. 

Moreover,  the  corporate  resource management  system  SAP  has  been  localized  effectively  by  Global  Cybersoft (www.globalcybersoft.com).  It  enables enterprises  to  set  up  formula  for  salary calculation,  human  resources  management  and  accounting,  etc.,  which  have been  customized  in  accordance  with Vietnamese  law.  Previously,  domestic firms were reluctant to use foreign ERP software (which adopts the international accounting system) for fear that it would not match the accounting system of Vietnam. However, Global Cybersoft as the consultant  on  deployment  asserts  that the establishment of corporate structure, human  resources  management,  payroll and social insurance systems will be entirely  consistent  with  Vietnamese  law. Global CyberSoft has acquired the Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) recertification for the fourth term from SAP for its Customer Support Center, which fulfills the requirements for SAP Enterprise Support not only for SAP ERP, but also for SAP Business Objects, SAP HCM solutions and SAP HANA platform. 

Though ERP is not a magic wand capable of making something out of nothing, it will be a smart bridge linking businesses to data and reports from various departments to improve the efficiency of job processing.

The Saigon Times Weekly