Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a type of software that companies use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management, compliance, and supply chain operations. A complete ERP suite also includes enterprise performance management; software that helps plan, budget, predict, and report on an organization’s financial results.

ERP systems provide transparency into your complete business process by tracking all aspects of production, logistics, and financials. These integrated systems act as a business’s central hub for end-to-end workflow and data, allowing a variety of departments to access.

It’s difficult to ignore the impact of ERP in today’s business world. As enterprise data and processes are corralled into ERP systems, businesses can align separate departments and improve workflows, resulting in significant bottom-line savings. Examples of specific business benefits include:

  • Improved business insight from real-time information generated by operational reports
  • Lower operational costs through streamlined business processes and best practices
  • Enhanced collaboration from users sharing data in contracts, requisitions, and purchase orders
  • Improved efficiency through a common user experience across many business functions and well-defined business processes
  • Consistent infrastructure from the back office to the front office, with all business activities having the same look and feel
  • Higher user-adoption rates from a common user experience and design
  • Reduced risk through improved data integrity and financial controls
  • Lower management and operational costs through uniform and integrated systems

What does this mean for an SMB?

ERPs can be very beneficial for your company, but depending on your budget. ERPs are ideal for mid-market to large companies who have the money to purchase such solutions as they commonly cost between $150,000 and $750,000 to adopt. Although, there are some free options for small companies or those with little to no budget like Bitrix24, iDempiere, and Metasfresh. 
 
While these tools can help with running your company more efficiently and effectively, they do not help much with Cybersecurity protections. For that CyberHoot recommends you do many things listed below. Don’t worry though, they won’t cost nearly as much as ERP systems do. 
 

Additional Cybersecurity Recommendations

Additionally, these recommendations below will help you and your business stay secure with the various threats you may face on a day-to-day basis. All of the suggestions listed below can be gained by hiring CyberHoot’s vCISO Program development services.

  1. Govern employees with policies and procedures. You need a password policy, an acceptable use policy, an information handling policy, and a written information security program (WISP) at a minimum.
  2. Train employees on how to spot and avoid phishing attacks. Adopt a Learning Management system like CyberHoot to teach employees the skills they need to be more confident, productive, and secure.
  3. Test employees with Phishing attacks to practice. CyberHoot’s Phish testing allows businesses to test employees with believable phishing attacks and put those that fail into remedial phish training.
  4. Deploy critical cybersecurity technology including two-factor authentication on all critical accounts. Enable email SPAM filtering, validate backups, and deploy DNS protection, antivirus, and anti-malware on all your endpoints.
  5. In the modern Work-from-Home era, make sure you’re managing personal devices connecting to your network by validating their security (patching, antivirus, DNS protections, etc) or prohibiting their use entirely.
  6. If you haven’t had a risk assessment by a 3rd party in the last 2 years, you should have one now. Establishing a risk management framework in your organization is critical to addressing your most egregious risks with your finite time and money.
  7. Buy Cyber-Insurance to protect you in a catastrophic failure situation. Cyber-Insurance is no different than Car, Fire, Flood, or Life insurance. It’s there when you need it most.

All of these recommendations are built into CyberHoot the product or CyberHoot’s vCISO Services. With CyberHoot you can govern, train, assess, and test your employees. Visit CyberHoot.com and sign up for our services today. At the very least continue to learn by enrolling in our monthly Cybersecurity newsletters to stay on top of current cybersecurity updates.

To learn more about ERPs, watch this short 2-minute video:

Sources: 

Oracle

NetSuite

Additional Reading:

Best Free ERP Software

Related Terms:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CyberHoot does have some other resources available for your use. Below are links to all of our resources, feel free to check them out whenever you like: 

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