The economic impact of the coronavirus crisis is being discussed on a daily basis - the Stuttgart-based ERP provider Planat surveyed 250 medium-sized companies with their own production facilities: 60% of companies are not very optimistic about the future, while 40% feel a very clear impact on work and production processes.
This has consequences for digitalization - 68 percent of companies are cutting their IT budgets. "The industry is in a dilemma: in addition to corona, the drastic changes in the automotive sector due to the transition to electromobility are also having a dampening effect on investments that are urgently needed to improve competitiveness," analyzes Christian Biebl, Managing Director of Planat. The medium-sized provider of the ERP/PPS solution FEPA has been working in this sector for almost 40 years and regularly surveys entrepreneurs and IT managers from medium-sized companies for the "ERP Challenges" study. The results are alarming: 60 percent of the companies surveyed still have media disruptions and interim solutions that use paper or Excel sheets to hinder digitization and cost valuable time.
Away with the paper
The coronavirus crisis has shown just how valuable paperless processes are. Dashboards can be used to gain an insight into company performance from anywhere in the world. Although production cannot take place in the home office, the entire administration, from purchasing to sales and service, can also function very well outside the office. "Paper-based processes and tinkering with intermediate steps on the way from ERP to the right department hamper efficiency and make day-to-day business more difficult - and nothing is more prone to errors than a media break," says Christian Biebl from Planat. The processes themselves do not receive enough attention: 28 percent of the companies surveyed only review their processes every five years, and 16 percent only every five to ten years. It is therefore no surprise that German SMEs give themselves a poor report card when it comes to digitalization: 56% believe that companies in the SME sector are lagging behind.
Customizing and automation
Nevertheless, 72 percent of those surveyed are certain that the cloud and automated production are becoming increasingly important - and that the ERP system must follow this path. 84% are certain that ERP is an absolute prerequisite for the expansion of digitalization, while 88% also see machine-to-machine communication as the basis. Customizing standard software is important for 76 percent of manufacturing companies - as is the selection of a solution provider. The provider's industry experience (80 percent), reference customers and their experience (72 percent) and the speed of project implementation (60 percent) are particularly convincing. "There is a paradigm shift in the ERP market. Those who used to be blinded by sheer market power are now much more careful when choosing who implements the project and how to access it in the event of a problem," says the Planat boss. The company enjoys a special position in the manufacturing sector and is optimally aligned to the processes of these companies. Planat is not only a manufacturer, but also provides personal and direct support - an important criterion on which the respondents also agree: 100 percent want immediate service from their ERP partner.
