When I was a kid, I used to dream about what I would be able to do if only my parents had the sense to buy me a Commodore 64; the computer of choice when I was growing up.
Not only would I get an A in every subject in school, but I would automate every tedious task in both my life as well as the lives of those around me. We would never have to do anything boring or repetitive ever again. It was going to be a perfect life.
After 6 months of nagging, I got one. A Commodore 64. It was great.
Of course it didn’t come close to delivering upon any of the goals I had painted for my parents, but it did sort my mother’s baking recipes, my brother’s record collection, and my father’s collection of rare books. They were semi-impressed.
For a while there, this was what we could expect from computers. It helped us keep things sorted and made it possible to quickly retrieve any data we wanted.
In a way, it has stayed this way for very long. Computers and computer systems being host to millions of records of data, there for the retrieval and “book keeping”, if you will.
Today, we like to think we’ve come further than that. Surely, your company’s computer system has moved far beyond only being able to record and retrieve data.
Or has it?
Looking at how enterprise systems are used in many companies today, a lot of the time they are still doing exactly that; collecting transactional data and keeping them for records. It’s my mother’s recipes on my old Commodore 64 all over again, but on a completely different scale.
It’s time to move beyond that. It’s time to actually try to get to the long withstanding promise of computers and what systems, built on computers, can do for us. It’s time for a change.
With the right system, computers of today can actually do so much more than just filing and sorting your data. The right system helps you in your workday with your important decisions, and gives you the information you want, in the format you want it, using the media that suits you the best.
Did I mention we have been working on a lot of new and exciting things in IFS Applications lately? If the above applies to you, you should check it out! You deserve a system that delivers on the promise of computers.
Kenneth Pettersson
From my experience, I would like to add that computers are very much in the communication business. It’s kind of obvious with smartphones, of course, but even ERP systems are often pretty much about communication between its users. Some features we added recently are also in that area – sticky notes are one example. So I expect – and hope – to see even more communication-driven ERP in the future.
Scott Hansen
Your comments are great. I too dreamed of ‘moon landings’ that I could control from the comfort of my Commodore 64.
The great things about an ERP is the leveraging of data that is collected in a mature system. How can we sift, bend, and twist data to answer today’s business questions. Data can be spread across the entire organization more quickly. What are the trends we can spot to help us identify new products? What is the next productivity boost that can provide? How can we write that sort so that reports appear in the blink of an eye?
Mohamed Ziyan
I dream of a situation where, to get things done by a computer or a system, I don’t have to sit in front of it or to have it open on my lap, especially. It should be available around. Probably mingled in other things around me or in the things I’ll carry or wear anyway. Sound too crazy and lazy haa? Probably I watched too much sci-fi movies.
But, I think you guys in the labs trying to achieve it in possible means. You have identified stuffs that we can do (in an ERP) while on the move and out of workplace, without dedicating a time slot to do that. I like the touch apps that run on the mobile phone (we all carry it anyway) using the cloud that enables this. How do you call them “off-line/off-duty employees?”
I’m surprised why mobile phone manufacturers delay a motion sensor into the phone yet (at least on a tab). May be they are not that crazy I’m!. Many things we do with the hardware in the phone today (connectivity options, camera, touch screen, etc), just think of what we could do on a future phone to come.
May be (just a hint…) when windows 8 tablets (almost capable as laptop) starts flooding into market (I heard a rumor that Nokia is planning such in late 2012) we will have to think it differently.