As a result of the pandemic, our working practices have changed forever. With more prevalent remote and hybrid working, employers must consider how best to provide employee access to corporate IT systems.
Your ERP system is the backbone of your company. So, it’s vital that you give your employees unrestricted access to it, even when they are working from home. Cloud ERP enables a flexible workplace and supports both home and hybrid working.
The Importance of a Flexible Workplace
Flexible working arrangements are important for staff wellbeing, job satisfaction and motivation.
When staff feel supported, their motivation and productivity increases. A happy and productive workforce will generate more positive outcomes, influencing both revenue and profit.
Motivated employees take less time off work, are more innovative, and are less likely to want to leave. The positive impacts from allowing your staff to work from home, even for some of the time, cannot be discounted.
The pandemic caused many to reconsider their working lives, resulting in the great resignation. As many as one in 20 UK workers quit their jobs, with many citing dissatisfaction with not being offered flexibility in the workplace. Staff retention has become an important factor for businesses as they try to maintain or increase levels of employee satisfaction.
Offering flexibility in how and where to work can boost morale, ease work-related stress and promote your staff’s sense of autonomy. This all adds up to a happier workforce, better business results and improved staff retention.
How Cloud ERP Supports Flexibility in the Workplace
With on-premises ERP, your staff will need to go into the office, or require specialised computers and pre-configured security access.
But if you have cloud ERP, your staff can access the system from anywhere. All they need is a web browser and an internet connection. Using a mobile, tablet, laptop or PC, they can still work from home, a coffee shop, or during their commute.
Cloud ERP offers great convenience. Using their login, your staff can access all the business financial data, customer details, order information, warehouse stock levels and much more.
There’s no lack of consistency if they want to work from the office some of the time too. All their work is saved and KPI dashboards and recent and saved searches are readily available.
From an administrative perspective, cloud ERP is easy for IT and finance managers to configure. With NetSuite ERP, you can reconfigure settings centrally without having to ask all your users to log out. The software changes and modifications to the database are made in the background while everyone is still working on the system.
Users across all departments can carry on uninterrupted while finance perhaps makes updates for a payment run, or IT is adding new customer fields. The database is always live, up to date, and fully available to all users, without any need to consolidate any information.
Another feature of cloud ERP is that major upgrades or system updates are made in the background. There are two annual major NetSuite updates. These, plus any minor updates are made without any user intervention. Without cloud ERP like this, home users would need to log out of their systems and download programme updates. Because of security issues, users of some software might even need to visit the office for their IT department to make an update. Cloud ERP avoids this scenario completely, ensures your staff are always using the latest version of the platform and maintains the vital workplace flexibility.
With access available using any device, from any location, and at any time, using cloud ERP can help you grow internationally. You can hire the best people for your business regardless of their location. For example, most operations would want to employ finance staff that have experience and knowledge of local laws and regulations. This would ordinarily mean hiring someone based in the UK for a UK role. But with cloud ERP, you can attract highly qualified expats from across the world. Even if they are in quite different time zones.
Offer Working Flexibility with Cloud ERP from NetSuite
If you offer your staff the option to work from home, whether part time or permanently, you will need to supply them with tools that will enable them to do their jobs well.
Being cloud-based, NetSuite ERP is flexible and provides an easy way for your employees to successfully work remotely. For a free business consultation or a tailored quote, contact us today.
