Choosing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for a factory is important in helping your business grow continuously and efficiently, because an ERP system helps manage resources across the whole organisation —

or as we’re more familiar with it, managing costs, because the resources in an organisation are costs.

So choosing an ERP system involves many factors that business owners must consider before installing it within the organisation.

The points are as follows.

Business needs
Flexibility to adapt the system
Cost
Operational performance
After-sales service / Support
System security / SECURITY
Testing before going live
Connecting the ERP system with factory technology

The details of each point are as follows.

1. Business needs

Many people try to find an ERP system specific to their business — such as an ERP for food factories, an ERP for car factories, or an ERP for construction businesses.

But to be honest, if you want to use an ERP system to plan and calculate production formulas,

there is no ERP system specific to any one particular industry. If a business owner wants to find an ERP system to install,

they should find a system that can support varied production and must support the work of every part of the organisation.

2. Flexibility to adapt the system

The ERP system to be used in a factory should be a highly flexible system, because each factory’s production process is different.

So a highly flexible system, one that adapts to fit how each organisation works,

is like your business having a weapon superior to competitors in the market.

3. Cost

ERP systems, whether Thai or foreign, are all relatively expensive — perhaps because the implementation process requires specialised experts,

making the service team’s labour cost high. Because besides the system cost and implementation cost,

there are also costs for training users, not to mention the cost of adapting the system to the organisation’s needs.

All of these incur costs, so you should talk with the service team to understand all the costs, especially the cost of the Implementer.

4. Check operational performance

If it’s an international ERP system, or a large ERP system, you may not be able to check its operational performance by requesting a trial.

Instead, the vendor will arrange an appointment to present the system and explain the entire workflow step by step.

During this stage, the business owner gets a clearer picture of what their own company’s data will look like,

and whether it can be used, and whether it’s efficient enough to install and use over the long term.

In addition, you can ask the service team to build a database to check performance.

Throughout every process, management should participate to help verify whether the system truly meets the organisation’s needs.

5. After-sales service / Support

Using an ERP system, even one from a world-famous brand, can still run into usage problems.

The larger the system and the more complex its functions, the more usage problems the user faces.

So the support team is a key part of making usage efficient.

So before implementing an ERP system, check the back-office service team to see whether they can take care of you

and are ready to help within a defined timeframe.

6. System security / SECURITY

Naturally, an ERP system is the tool that manages all of an organisation’s data.

If you’re going to install a system, you should check the security standards — how strict the vendor is,

and how user permissions are set, and whether the system has user-permission controls, to prevent business data from leaking.

7. Testing before going live

Before going live for real use, the ERP vendor always sends a database

to test the system for the user first. The business owner should appoint a responsible person in each department

and test whether the system truly works and meets the Requirement that was discussed,

to prevent problems — especially in the production area, which is complex in planning and controlling production costs.

8. Connecting the ERP system with factory technology

For industrial factories, machinery used in the production process is unavoidable —

such as bringing in AI to control machines instead of people. An ERP system

must be capable of connecting with the machinery,

so it can control the production system more efficiently.

So when choosing an ERP for a factory, you should look at: business needs, flexibility to adapt the system,

cost, operational performance, after-sales service / Support, and system security / SECURITY.

Every point mentioned is a key factor that lets a business with a production factory grow steadily.

If you’re looking for an ERP system with expertise in implementing for production factories, PlanetOne ERP

has implementation experts with as much as 28 years of experience. The system is highly flexible, and it’s also a large system at an affordable price.

How to choose an ERP for your factory for maximum efficiency