Introduction

The unprecedented turn of events in 2020 has forced employees all over the world to stay at home and work remotely to fight the global pandemic. Established business firms, SMEs and large corporations are shifting to remote work environments to ensure continuity of their operations. Most firms were not prepared to immediately migrate to a fully remote work environment while some others could handle the situation easily. It is essential to provide your employees with the right technology to keep in touch and get access to critical business content. Customized ERP solutions helped Phykon pivot easily to a remote work environment painlessly.

Challenges Faced by the Business

The most pressing priority for businesses is to ensure that the right remote-work technologies, processes, and training are in place and operate adequately. As our employees had to start working from home immediately, a central employee management software was the need of the hour. We had to be prepared for the challenges that might come up.

Decline in employee productivity, difficulty with timely reporting and financial closures, communication barriers and increased cybersecurity risks are some of the challenges that come up usually in remote work environments. Lack of transparency and communication barriers leads to confusion, distrust and even conflicts within a team. Another challenge is difficulty in maintaining company culture. People lose the sense of a common identity which eventually leads to lower employee engagement. Moreover, the remote workforce is more prone to data theft and other kinds of malware attacks. We wanted to proactively address these possible challenges.

Solution

In order to ensure we weren’t riddled with these challenges, we had deployed appropriate measures from the word go.

Phykon customized an open source ERP software to meet its unique business requirements. With the customized ERP solution, we could easily overcome these challenges and manage all remotely working employees. The solution allowed us to overcome communication barriers, as it enabled real-time access to all employees with a login and password. The ERP solution helped us to painlessly assign and manage tasks, view its progress and receive employee feedback.

Built-in dashboards and workflow made remote reporting easier. The solution offered a unified platform for team members to reallocate tasks to other teammates, notify all team members about the change and view status updates. It gave better visibility over the projects they are working on, employee timesheets and more. The managers were able to analyse employee performance and pain points even without face-to-face interaction. They could easily monitor weekly submissions, time of completion and error logs all from a single platform.

Results

We experienced the following results almost immediately:

Automated workflows and proper management of records with ERP software enabled us to improve operational efficiencies in a remote-work environment. It improved collaboration among geographically separated employees. Our teams were no longer working in silos. The solution empowered better work management. Managers could track attendance, employee performance and real-time work status. Employees were able to view and manage tasks assigned to them. The solution also helped our HR department to carry out employee on-boarding and exit formalities from remote work environments, in addition to smoother administrative processes. It has also maintained accuracy, consistency and security of data shared within the organization.

Since the ERP is open to endless customisation, there was no limit to its adaptability. We could incorporate changes according to the unique needs of each department.

Conclusion

ERP solutions enable you to automate workflows, improve productivity, and instil a culture of preparedness. A well-made ERP system, that addresses your specific requirements, is a one-stop solution that binds your entire business together. A business owner can depend on it for a bird’s eye view of the entire enterprise. Moreover, customized ERP solutions make resilient business operations a piece of cake. It is essential to have an efficient system in place, tailored to your specific needs, that seamlessly accommodates any change. This way, you can manage the operational impacts of unprecedented events. ERP solutions undoubtedly ensure resilience of a business during a global emergency and makes it future-ready. And with the right service provider, you can grow your business with a made-to-order ERP solution.