The two main goals for globalization are both the initiative to tap into new markets for increases sales as well as the desire to streamline and decrease manufacturing costs. While the goal to tap into new markets is the primary goal for most companies (almost 80 % of companies surveyed), in today’s economic environment, more than half of these companies are also looking in parallel to cut down costs as they are looking at their business from a more global perspective.

ERP Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions and Globalization

The two main goals for globalization are both the initiative to tap into new markets for increases sales as well as the desire to streamline and decrease manufacturing costs. While the goal to tap into new markets is the primary goal for most companies (almost 80 % of companies surveyed), in today’s economic environment, more than half of these companies are also looking in parallel to cut down costs as they are looking at their business from a more global perspective. Going global has its challenges from a business and technological perspective. There really is no perfect panacea when responding the complicated ERP, enterprise resource planning, system requirements that arise when globalizing a company. There are choices and decisions to be made when juggling performance, resources, costs and operational logistics from relocated departments and manufacturing facilities. ERP systems are critical to providing the right metrics and KPI’s or key performance indicators for company managers to run the business and meet organization standards and performance goals. These critical measurements are often overshadowed by the supply chain priorities when looking at a sample of global manufacturing companies. The companies that do embrace these KPI’s and look to ERP solutions to streamline business processes across multiple locations and geographies with suppliers, partners and manufacturers have realized significant improvement (almost 70%) in time reduction from order entry to delivery of goods. ERP solutions are critical for company’s ability to achieve growth and cost reduction goals by going global. Enterprise solutions may not be the quick fix for international market penetration, but without a strong IT foundation that supports a seamless department-wide, business processes wide infrastructure domestically, it will be very difficult to manage an expansion of operations internationally. Internal operations must be fully integrated at home before adding the complications of a global expansion. The first recommended path of laying out a foundation for globalization is to map out potential shared services and business processes such as common administrative functions or technology solutions that is shared among other enterprise applications. After laying out this foundation, look for the business processes between, customers, manufacturing and supply partners and incorporate these common business processes in your ERP system. Once you have your enterprise system solidified and streamlined domestically, you can implement your enterprise systems globally.