3 things to know if you want to customize your ERP system

In reality, an ERP system is a highly flexible system. Using an ERP system involves both the various functions in the standard system and functions that ERP users need to adjust or customize further, to make the ERP system work even more efficiently.

But using an ERP system doesn’t mean the organisation must customize everything, because some things, once customized, may affect other parts of the work as well.

Therefore, in this article the author will discuss 3 things to know if you want to customize an ERP system, as introductory information for organisations that plan to implement an ERP system in the future.

The details of the 3 things to know if you want to customize an ERP system are as follows:

1. The reasons for customizing
2. What you want to gain from customizing
3. The cost of customizing

The details of each item are as follows:

1. The reasons for customizing

In fact, an organisation probably has only a few reasons for wanting to customize an ERP system. The reasons for customizing inevitably come down to:

• Wanting greater speed in work
• Wanting to see more detailed data in reports than before
• Wanting the system to calculate data in greater depth and detail than before, and so on

The clearer the reasons for customizing, the more detailed the requirements gathering can be.

2. What you gain from customizing an ERP system

What an organisation gains from customizing an ERP system—besides getting an ERP system that can work more efficiently for the organisation—also includes other benefits from customizing the ERP system, such as:

• A customized ERP system will be adjusted to fit the specific laws of that locality, such as tax laws, employment laws, and so on
• A customized ERP system will be adjusted to better support various modern technologies, and so on

3. The cost of customizing an ERP system

Customizing an ERP system inevitably comes with costs. The basic costs of customizing break down into:

• The cost of gathering various requirements (in some cases there may be no cost for this part)
• The cost for the ERP development team, who must adjust various commands in the program, or set certain configurations in the database, so the system can produce results as the organisation requires
• The cost of training system users so they can use the customized part of the system

In summary, the 3 things to know if you want to customize an ERP system are: the reasons for customizing, what you want to gain from customizing, and the cost of customizing.

These 3 points help the organisation see more clearly that, if the ERP system cannot meet the organisation’s work needs in certain matters, customization helps make the system work as close to the organisation as possible. After all, customizing an ERP system is for the organisation’s long-term benefit.