Businesses often frame a new enterprise resource planning solution (ERP) as an operational efficiency initiative. While ERP does improve operations through system-wide automation, end-to-end visibility, and AI-driven analytics, among other areas, it plays an equally large role in improving customer outcomes. ERP is a customer-focused solution, not just an efficiency solution.
Modernizing a company’s backend with a cloud-based ERP solution improves customer outcomes in a variety of ways. Let’s look at six ERP aspects that improve customer outcomes.
- A Single Source for Customer Interaction History - We’ve all been there. During a customer service interaction, we talk with one agent and then later discover there’s the need to explain our situation all over again the next time we interact with the business. Or we place an order, and a customer service agent seems remarkably ignorant of our past interactions with the company.
These customer service annoyances don’t happen with a business uses a modern ERP solution, because all order and customer service interactions are collected in a single location. This creates a continuity between the customer and the business where interactions go from discrete touch points to a unified, ongoing conversation with the business just as we expect from friends and acquaintances.
This continuity or lack thereof is a particular issue for Gen Z, which expects a unified customer response. - Reduced Bottlenecks for Better Fulfillment - Efficient operations benefit a company’s bottom line, but they also improve customer outcomes.
When a business uses a modern ERP solution, enhanced automation and visibility help ensure that products are in stock, ship times are efficient and accurate, order processing notifications are consistent, and areas such as invoicing are both clear and routine.
A clear, well-run business that comes from a modern ERP backend helps ensure that the friction is reduced between wanting a product or service and getting it. - Improved Quality Management - Defects and product quality issues can play an outsized role in the customer experience, and ERP can help reduce these quality management issues.
A business that runs on a modern ERP solution has completely visibility around the inputs that go into the manufacturing process, and a precise feedback loop that includes serialization for logging product or manufacturing variance that is useful for recall, replacement and improved quality control.
When there are quality issues, a business can spot these issus early and help avoid the negative customer experience that comes from quality control issues. - Better Product Development Feedback - Customers expect responsiveness and a feedback loop where products and services get better the more they are used. The days when customers just had to accept what a business offers are long gone.
Managing customer feedback and incorporating the best ideas into future product development can be challenging and scattershot without a modern ERP solution that both collects and sorts customer suggestions.
With a modern ERP solution, customer feedback can flow directly from sales channels and online portals to design teams that work on future product releases. This efficient, automated feedback loop can show customers that their voice is being heard, and improve the competitiveness of a company’s products and solutions on an ongoing basis. - Unified Communications Along All Sales Channels - It can be hard meeting customers where they expect interaction today. Businesses now must act the same way as people, being accessible on various social channels, by phone and written communication such as email, and in person at retail outlets.
A business might interact with customers along multiple channels, but it takes a modern ERP solution for these channels to all integrate into a seamless whole that makes interaction across channels seamless. With a cloud-based ERP, the various channels that a business meets the customer can all flow into the same support backend, creating a unified experience that improves customer interaction. - Automation that Frees Up Time for a Customer-Centric Approach - When employees are focused on manual tasks and paperwork, there’s less time for focusing on the customer. When management is generating reports and working in spreadsheets, there’s less time for strategy and keeping the focus on customer outcomes.
The widespread automation that comes from a modern ERP solution frees up staff time through the elimination of manual processes and hunting for data. This operational efficiency gives employees at all levels of the business more time to focus on customer outcomes and quality of experience instead.
A business with inefficient backend systems is focused on operations. A business run with a modern ERP solution has the time to focus on the customer.
Learn more about how cloud ERP can help.
Modernizing an organization’s backend with a new ERP solution is about improved efficiency, but ultimately it is about better customer outcomes.
Learn more about how ERP can help, and the process for migrating to a modern backend solution, by calling one of our experienced ERP consultants at (801) 642-0123, writing us at info@nbs-us.com, or filling out a Contact Us form.
