Social ERP: the Future is Here

In one of my earlier articles few years back, I had postulated the idea of ERP Waves - where ERP solutions metamorphosed from being huge monolithic implementations for Fortune 100 companies to the broader realm of nimble, mid-market organizations, including some of the newest and most agile around the world. I pondered the ‘Future of ERP' in my article, considering the plethora of changes happening in our world.

We are living in a very fluid world where ‘change is constant'. Everyday, you can count multiple things which will become extinct over the next 2-3 years, like analog TV, fax machines, and maybe even books. The beauty is that it is happening at such a fast pace that companies will have no choice but to re-invent themselves every few years as well push employees to re-train themselves to survive the change.

The next big question - What next for ERP? How would customers and employees who live on social tools like Facebook and Twitter push their ERP systems into the future? How can ERP become more social to create a better collaboration in the whole supply chain - from customers to suppliers at the nth level? Any change comes with a flip side too; for example, companies may have issues in sharing their internal data. However, any organization that has been successful with early social efforts can attest that organizations must segregate their information - the private data and the social data which would be shared or socialized to engage customers and suppliers to build organizational effectiveness.

The web has created multiple opportunities. Facebook-ization and Twitter-ization of organisations will not only connect customers and suppliers in real time but holds the potential ...