Delivering Value: 7 Benefits of a Modern ERP that Empower Your IT Team 

Today's organizations require modern technology solutions to remain competitive, continually calling on their Information Technology (IT) professionals to manage complex systems, data, and user access. As new systems come online, there are increasing demands on IT for configuration, maintenance, and user provisioning on each of these systems. They are responsible for providing development resources for customizations where needed. And they must remain vigilant of security threats, both internal and external, to the organization. 

As you consider upgrading your existing financial software to a modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, your IT department will be concerned about how the product will impact their department, specifically, how much of their time will be spent maintaining, provisioning, customizing, and configuring the new ERP and how well it will work with existing hardware and software across the firm. 

In this blog, we outline 7 benefits a modern ERP provides the IT department and how Dynamics 365 provides each benefit. 

Scalability – Modern ERPs offer cloud-based solutions that shift the day-to-day maintenance of hardware, operating systems, and software to the hosting provider, freeing up your IT personnel to tackle more targeted technical solutions. Cloud-based solutions allow administrators to dynamically adjust resources such as memory, disk capacity, CPU, and network bandwidth without investing in more hardware. 

Provisioning user roles and privileges – Today's ERPs provide greater granularity when defining, provisioning, and administering user roles and privileges. System administrators can define various roles to prevent using or misusing sensitive data or actions, which is critical to ensure proper Segregation of Duties for regulatory compliance or prevent casual users from viewing sensitive records, like payroll information. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it easy to administer user roles and permissions. Dynamics 365 running on Azure lets administrators manage users and access rights through Azure Active Directory. Dynamics 365 also provides tools that allow administrators to provision and monitor licensing and ensure regulatory compliance. 

Security – Granular user access rights available in modern ERPs result in greater system security and regulatory compliance. In addition, the major cloud hosting providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, etc.) offer enterprise-level network security, including intrusion prevention and detection, backup and restore capabilities, high availability, and geographically separate server sites. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 on Azure provides robust network security, DDoS protection, data encryption, identity and access management, threat detection, regulatory compliance, disaster recovery and high availability, and safeguards for hosted applications from malicious attacks, bots, and common web vulnerabilities. 

Software updates and maintenance – Cloud and cloud-enabled applications ease the pain of software updates. Application software can be updated automatically with little downtime. Administrators have 24/7 access to the application for administration and maintenance purposes. 

Dynamics 365 maintains customization outside the core product, allowing the application to be updated automatically without affecting customizations, custom interfaces, or configuration settings. 

Integration – The concept of an ERP system is shifting from a discrete application to a platform that integrates with other business systems within the organization. Modern business systems provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate integrations with other business systems. This allows your ERP application to share data with inventory management, customer relationship management, and payroll applications. 

Dynamics 365 products provide flexible APIs to most major business applications, plus native integration to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft's Power Platform. 

Automation and customizations – Modern ERPs allow users and developers to customize the core product. These customizations allow for: 

• automating manual processes, such as signature approval 
• simple customizations using low-code/no-code drag-and-drop development tools 
• complex customizations using software development tools 

These customization tools allow users to extend the base ERP product to meet specific processes and needs of the organization.  

Dynamics 365 integrates with the Power Platform, which includes Power Automate for process automation and Power Apps for drag-and-drop low-code app development. Microsoft Dynamics 365 supports a software development environment for complex software customizations by you or your Dynamics partner. Users can also access Microsoft's AppSource for software solutions provided by third-party developers to extend Dynamics 365 functionality. 

AI-driven reporting and data analysis – Most modern ERPs have a wealth of reporting capabilities that provide a suite of standard financial, operational, and performance reports and allow users to create custom reports for specific business needs.  

Dynamics 365 also provides role-based dashboards, AI-driven business intelligence, analytics tools that use multiple data sources with Power BI and Microsoft Copilot, and integration with Excel for in-depth data analysis and reporting. 

A modern, scalable ERP helps IT teams manage data securely, forecast future needs, and optimize resource allocation to support business growth and innovation. Contact Western Computer to learn how Dynamics 365 can help your IT department deliver exceptional value to your organization.