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The market today is flooded with messages that include the concepts of Machine Learning, AI, Robotics, digital assistants and much more that fall under the collective term "Emerging Technologies". And not least the vendors of ERP systems are beating the drum that their systems are now becoming self-learning and can be packaged with a multitude of smart services.
And we can note that several of the global vendors are investing massively in technology to take the step towards creating a "smart" system. That is, a system that over time can learn the customer's business and thereby take over parts of the user's daily work. It sounds exciting, but the question is how far this has come in reality and what the vendors can already offer in the form of smart services today?
The concept of a digital assistant can be summarised as a combination of 5-10 different technologies that need to work together for the user to experience the system as a colleague who can relieve them in everyday tasks. We usually count speech and language interpretation, RPA, machine learning and predictive analytics as core components which together with Big Data, Data management and APIs create the conditions to achieve a system (or platform) that in cooperation with the outside world can be perceived as "self-thinking". And most of these technologies are included in some form in the description also given by the global vendors – when they present their investments for the future.
However, when it comes to concretely presenting a list of all the smart services that can be delivered "out-of-the-box" it is often a very short list from the system vendor. And in many cases embarrassingly short. In several ERP systems the now traditional routine "matching of vendor invoices" is counted as a smart service. To instead show functions where the system can actually learn by itself to carry out smart purchasing or replanning of stock or production based on data and patterns that no one else has seen – is rarely to be found.
This should not be interpreted as criticism but as fundamental facts. In reality, many "ordinary" ERP systems have not come anywhere when it comes to smart services. However, we increasingly see the vendors of classic ERP systems building frameworks outside the system where technology is built into the platform to create smart services. And where they intend over time to gradually create services that can continuously process the ERP system's data and put this into context with other external data to make predictive analyses and suggest actions to take. Both SAP, Oracle and Infor have come some way in this area and intend "in the future" to be able to distribute this type of preconfigured services in connection with ongoing upgrades.
Can such requirements then be set in connection with procurements and how would that work?
Yes, it is possible to set requirements for this. But one must at the same time understand and be aware that it primarily concerns smart "tools" where the customer must work with the tool themselves and refine it over time for the system to become smart. So the requirements should be set on the content of the tool (or platform) and how accessible it is for the user. As well as how flexible the tool is when it comes to combining data from several different sources and not just the ERP system. Added to this is the importance of requiring the system's openness. We can note that even in 2020 we still too often encounter large and established ERP systems which have major weaknesses when it comes to open APIs towards the outside world.
If one is to evaluate ERP systems based on "smartness" then one should present to the vendor their 10-15 most important processes and ask the vendor to concretely show in what way their ERP system can create automation in the customer's business. Request a presentation of the tool used to create and build new rules to manage the processes and how the system can be configured so that it can on its own learn to find patterns in the daily work and suggest changes.
