The complexity of IT frameworks has been a challenge for many businesses, regardless of industry or size classification, in the past few years, especially since the diversity of solutions and technologies has expanded so rapidly in a short period of time. Luckily, there are technologies that can minimize complexity and drive the efficiency of overall IT implementation, oversight and management throughout the life cycle of each investment, namely automation.
Studies have indicated that one of the toughest areas has been enterprise resource planning, as provisioning demands have diversified along with the options available to businesses by way of investment. ERP integration is a critical aspect of modern IT and operations management, and using automation solutions to complete these tasks and sustain the cohesion of systems can be enough to improve the bottom line for any business.
What can be gained?
Renee Bassett, writing for Automation World, recently explained that one manufacturer in the food-safety technology industry has seen vast improvements since implementing a tool that integrated Oracle ERP, product lifecycle management tools and other aspects of IT management into one cohesive environment. According to the news provider, a multitude of manufacturers have not started to branch out from simple ERP systems that are now relatively one-dimensional in nature, and this is hindering success on a large scale.
The source affirmed that Roka Bioscience, the firm that implemented the automation tool that brings together metadata and structured information from each of the systems in use, is one example of how these tools can mitigate problems that would otherwise proliferate.
"Streamlining administrative processes and eliminating duplicate data entry is key for improved productivity and data accuracy," Daniel Churco, Roka Bioscience senior manager for information technology, told Automation World. "However, when we tried to connect our Oracle Agile PLM system with our Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP system, we found out just how difficult an ERP-to-PLM integration can be."
The word of the day
Integration has been one of the most common discussion points in the average boardroom throughout the past several years, as businesses begin to recognize the vast challenges standing in the way of optimal operational management. Automation tools for ERP integration and general workflow management are increasingly required to modernize system oversight and optimization tasks, and businesses that have not yet considered deploying these tools should do so soon.
