Gone are the days when only corporate giants could afford enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. Vendors have realized that if they have to increase their sales in terms of quantity it’s the small and medium enterprises they should target. And keeping in mind the large target market they have come up with new forms of ERP which are simpler to install, easier to use and cheaper to buy; the result is – hosted form of ERP.

What is hosted form of ERP?

ERP is an integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources of an enterprise. Hosted ERP entails accessing the system from the Internet while the application is at a data center, which is not owned by you.

The purpose of ERP is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organisation and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

What are the benefits of hosted ERP over regular ERP?

The function of hosted ERP is same as the earlier version of ERP but the advantages of the newer version are more than the predecessor.

• When you have the hosted form you can move away from capital expenditure to operating expenditure to run the ERP as you will have to pay a per user cost each month. It’s cheaper.

• There is no need to have the infrastructure in-house in terms of hardware and resources to manage the maintenance of the infrastructure.

• Access to data stored on hosted ERP does not depend on the Internet therefore, the access speed increases.

• It is easier to customise the software.

The SME market for ERP is growing quite rapidly. With the economic recovery market opportunities for companies have improved and many of them are now on an aggressive growth path. For managing that growth efficiently they need to implement systems to streamline their operations. ERP specialists are seeing rapid adoption in this segment.

Apart from Microsoft, SAP and other big players, there are a lot of smaller ones who have entered the arena and are designing customised and affordable solutions for SMEs. So sit with your vendor and assess your requirements!