American manufacturers are doggedly pursuing innovation, according to research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, who discovered that organizations within this space are almost twice as likely to invest in boundary-pushing techniques and tools than businesses occupying service industries. In fact, U.S. manufacturers' annual research and development budgets constitute 68% of all yearly commercial R&D expenditures here in the states, per the OECD. However, American manufacturing firms are not totally free to reach their innovative potential, despite what these numbers suggest. Why? Ineffective enterprise resource planning software.

Poor ERP solutions can hinder organizational advancement on multiple fronts and prevent manufacturers intent on future-proofing their back offices and shop floors from implementing bleeding-edge mechanisms and processes. Here are some of the ways in which faulty ERP platforms hold back stateside manufacturers:

Siloed or missing decision-making insights
Data propels manufacturing progress by lending decision-makers the relative certainty they need to greenlight projects that have impact. Unfortunately, manufacturing businesses with ineffective ERP solutions often cannot collect, analyze and centralize the definitive insights that leaders need to chart out transformation. What is the reason for this? ERP data siloing or loss are among the root causes, according to analysts for Ultra Consultants. 

A good number of manufacturers pursue ERP implementation with the purpose of breaking down departmental database barriers and streamlining data movement but end up leaving these informational partitions in place anyway or letting historical insights that propel existing processes fall to the wayside. Some implementers falter during the planning process, putting into place ERP solutions that are not compatible with current and future business processes, cannot keep pace with these functions and therefore do not allow for the sort of automated data collection that makes information consolidation a real possibility. Others simply fail to think about integration at all and end up overseeing ERP platforms that become silos themselves, unwittingly omitting important historical insights that offer additional context and even drive existing operational processes.

Depressed employee efficiency and productivity
Organizational innovation and staff productivity go hand-in-hand, even as the golden age of enterprise automation draws nearer. Approximately 55% of CEOs across all industries worldwide believe human capital availability correlates directly to their ability to catalyze innovation within their respective companies, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Strong ERP platforms actually allow businesses, including those in the manufacturing arena, to effectively harness the power of their people via features that boost productivity and encourage staff to take on more impactful duties that drive internal development at scale. Of course, poor ERPs do the exact opposite through difficult-to-navigate user interfaces that drag down efficiency and productivity.

Certifiably shoddy ERP UI components vary depending on the system. Many poor ERP solutions feature decidedly nonintuitive interfaces that employees struggle to navigate without looking over associated reference materials, while others do not support workflow customization, which is essential to user success. Lacking responsiveness is another common UI sticking point for less-than-stellar ERP platforms. Modern businesses must be able to access ERP software across multiple devices to take full advantage of this technological resource. Even a seemingly innocuous factor like platform design can hurt user productivity, making it difficult for employees to find important information or even dissuading them from logging in.

Ineffective cybersecurity protections
If information drives innovation then protecting sensitive internal data should rank among the most important functional enterprise imperatives. However, effectively defending company caches from hackers and other cybercriminals is often easier said than done, especially today when new digital threats seem to materialize with each software launch. Black hats managed to orchestrate more than 1,200 large-scale breaches and abscond with approximately 446 million corporate files in 2018, per the Identity Theft Resource Center. Manufacturing firms, while less susceptible to breaches than their peers in other sectors, are also dealing with regular intrusions — most notably, financially motivated cyberattacks and instances of online espionage, according to Verizon Wireless. Various enterprise processes and tools put manufacturers at risk for digital strikes of this nature, including poor ERP solutions.

ERP security is more important than ever before, according to researchers for Digital Shadows and Onapsis, who revealed that the volume of easy-to-exploit ERP vulnerabilities has risen dramatically over the last decade or so. And even highly respected ERP providers such as Oracle and SAP have seen more systematic weaknesses materialize, meaning that lesser solutions do not stand a chance against modern hackers. Why are lower-caliber ERP platforms more likely to face intrusion? Inconsistent vendor support is a major contributing factor, as vulnerability mitigation via effective patch management is a key variable in the ERP cybersecurity equation. Overcustomization and lacking code-level protections are significant issues as well, for manufacturers can only properly lock down their online assets with the help of streamlined, easy-to-update software and system modules designed with cybersecurity in mind.

American manufacturers can avoid suffering these innovation-stemming issues and move their organizations forward by taking time to select and implement proven ERP solutions that facilitate data centralization, support employee productivity and protect essential digital assets. Here at Accent Software, we help manufacturers do just that through our vendor-vetted Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementation services. As a certified Microsoft Business Solutions partner, we lend manufacturing firms of all sizes the deployment insight they need to install ERP technology that supports business advancement rather than hindering it.

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