K24 Recap: CoreX CEO Rick Wright on The Future of Business Systems Beyond ERP [Part Two]

As our understanding of ERP evolves, modern programs focus on creating more holistic employee and stakeholder experiences.

Welcome back to Part Two of our Knowledge 2024 panel recap article on the future of business systems beyond ERP, where we share thoughts from CoreX CEO Rick Wright’s roundtable panel at K24 on the future of ERP modernization mentalities.

In Part One – available here - we explored how an organization’s vision for a more modern ERP has evolved to embrace today’s market realities. We also shared trends and strategies companies are deploying today as they unify their various systems of record under a modern and efficient system of engagement. (Spoiler alert: Workflows are game changers.)

Speaking at Knowledge 24, our panel of Operations and Finance was led by ServiceNow and joined by Operations and Procurement Executives from Dropbox, Stanford Medical Group, and our very own CEO, Rick Wright – who also happens to be the former AVP of Customers for ServiceNow, as well as a past Global leader for KPMG’s Supply Chain and Procurement transformation practice.

Today, we’re going to break down our next theme underpinning the march towards ERP modernization: How intuitive experiences are evolving Sourcing and Procurement Operations.

According to CoreX CEO, Rick Wright, the imperative to transform every business unit leveraging new tech is, “a mindset that the entire company must adopt.” He counsels leadership to ask, themselves how to leverage technology advances (user experience, mobile, AI, ML data insights, etc.) to unlock trapped value across the landscape of all enterprise processes. 

Experiences vs. Drowning by Email

In Part One of our K24 Summary, we talked about using connective Workflow platforms like ServiceNow to eliminate the current procurement “swivel chair” process, forcing specialists to toggle between multiple ERP, direct, and indirect spending platforms just to do their daily jobs. (Or send 18 emails to resolve a shipping exception.)

Unifying multiple disparate systems into a single engagement layer, as our panelists shared, is the next evolution of Enterprise Digital Transformation -- increasing organizational controls and team efficiency.

Leaders say a better system of engagement also makes the daily lives of their teams massively less annoying.

• Fewer clicks (with less required training).
  
  ERPs and many systems of record require a specialized understanding of these systems. However, most users think about a specific procurement request or finance function very infrequently and need a much simpler way to get what they need from these systems without all the time and frustration it currently involves.
  
  

For example, when tracking an issue with a recalled product, traditionally they might have to log in and log out of five different interfaces to find five different pieces of data (location, delivery date, alternative or adjacent product suites, etc.).

Instead, your team could log into a unified, seamless mobile experience that pulls that data from four or five different systems in the backend (your ERP, supply chain and logistics, billing, and inventory system data, for example), yet the field service technician (or suppliers) only ever reviews one screen.

The value? According to HBR, companies who free employees up to do better, more interesting, higher-value work significantly increase overall retention rates.

• Micro-experiences for high-value populations.

Unified workflows also allow organizations to create different workflow experiences for the different constituencies that procurement teams serve.

According to our panelists, the purchasing interface can even change the relationship between the company and its high-value employees in some cases. For example, highly paid, client-facing Managing Directors in Consulting or Finance, or Surgeons or Research Directors in a Healthcare Research Group will need to leverage procurement teams from time to time.

Working in a modern system like ServiceNow, allows companies to build different micro-layers of engagement, by persona. This means your surgeons don't need to navigate the entire Coupa platform and can spend more time doing patient-facing work, and less time trying to remember a specialized purchase order number.

• Better collaboration among stakeholders and suppliers

According to Wright, “how suppliers on board, how they continue to be valued suppliers, how they submitted invoices, all of that dramatically changes by building these modern systems of engagement across the ERP systems.”

Another panelist asserted “If I'm standing in a warehouse, and only half the shipment came in, instead of having to call somebody, I can reroute a replacement order through a mobile interface. Saving time, headaches, and customer complaints.”

Overall, according to Wright, “Workflow engines change how work gets done across the entire spectrum of work, from internal resources to external collaborators and suppliers, it can dramatically change how all stakeholders interact with that enterprise.”

For Initial ERP Improvements, All the Fruit is Low-Hanging

As we look at the future of core business systems beyond disparate ERP programs, there’s a lot to be excited about. Certainly, organizations today have so many opportunities to rethink their daily tasks and use new workflow applications to make major process redesigns to improve their business, their team’s enjoyment of daily work, and even supplier and customer retention.

Of course, the next inevitable question for many on our panel becomes where do you start?

To Wright, the key message is not just that “there’s lots of low-hanging fruit. In fact, most of the fruit is low-hanging” when you’re talking about initial efficiency, control, and cost-saving gains.

Our panelists recommend picking strategic, specific use cases you can start to drive a much better experience over time. Keys to success, according to our panelists, include:

• First, understand that landscape and where the biggest pains are in your business. Leverage data analysis, KPIs, and even stakeholder interviews to understand what’s the most on fire, and which processes – when improved, will extract the most value and build a significantly more engaging, connected experience.
  
  
• Define your critical stakeholders and how they're engaging with your organization. Does that engagement span multiple organizations or multiple ERP systems? That will change what connectivity you need.
  
  
• Begin by taking small bites. According to Wright, “This is not something that you're going to go away for a year and come back and all of a sudden, bam, you have a new ERP system.”
  Instead, the most effective path to transformation lies in picking an issue driving most of the pain for your team today, whether that's most hours spent on critical issues or AP rationalization from multiple sources, or upcoming regulatory changes.
  
  From there, you can build engaging, connected experiences for those activities, show how you can drive the most value in your organization, and then phase out your follow-on projects as you triage the next critical issue.

Every member of our K24 panel agreed that an iterative approach to transformation is key.

Wright recommends thinking about your ERP transformation as “a journey of lots of little agile improvements.” These first pilot projects can drive change in a few months as opposed to quarters or years, and show momentum and true ROI. (Some of these projects “will ultimately fund themselves” according to the panel).

And then, Wright suggests, “just start to string those together” and you will have an agile ERP modernization approach.

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Thanks for tuning back in for Part Two of our three-part Knowledge recap for the Future of ERP Panel. You can find Part One of our Series, TITLE, here, and standby next week for our third and final installment where we cover AI’s impact on Core Operations and the future of ERP Transformation.