Top Examples of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems include a range of comprehensive solutions for business performance management.

Some key capabilities of these tools include financial management, customer relationship management, resource management, and more. ERP tools often include industry-specific features, such as supply chain management.

This article will compare 6 top ERP systems according to their key features, benefits, downsides, and customer reviews.
 

ERP systems can serve as the single source of truth for successful businesses. The best tools offer a wide range of features for making manual processes more efficient, delivering real-time operational visibility, and streamlining cash flow.

When looking for the best cloud-based ERP systems, consider features such as:

ERP systems can provide valuable support for business financial management. By providing a central database for critical data, they can help business leaders make informed decisions backed up by reliable metrics.

Key features include: real-time reporting, project budgeting, financial forecasting, billing, and expense management. 

ERPs can help manage relationships with current and potential customers. Additionally, they can support alignment between your sales team and other business departments, such as management or marketing.

Key features include: customizable sales pipeline, centralized communications, sales performance management, sales revenue forecasting.

Check out our list of the best CRM for agencies to learn more.

Resource management is important for ensuring that businesses have a skilled and qualified workforce to stay competitive, resilient, and sustainable. ERP systems help evaluate performance, manage workloads, and guide hiring decisions.

Key features include: utilization rate forecasting, resource management plans, time off management, scenario planning

ERPs are known for offering functionalities tailored to various industries, such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and more. These may include supply chain management, inventory tracking, quality control, and service requests.

According to the 2023 ERP Report, businesses that implement ERP experience:

Learn more on how businesses benefit from ERP systems.

Productive is a specialized ERP solution designed by industry veterans to support agency workflows.

Find out how Productive helps a creative technology agency get more project management autonomy.

Its key features include project budgeting and financial management, human resource planning, and customer relationship management.

Additional features include automations, custom permissions, collaborative documentation with AI, and more.

One of the biggest benefits of using a consolidated platform is the seamless interaction between different features. This improves the efficiency of your business management processes and supports richer data. 

Productive enhances business financial management through features like project budgeting for different client projects, including fixed, hourly, or retainer engagements. 

When it comes to the integration of budgeting with other platform features, the most notable examples include resource management and time tracking:

An additional feature includes Purchase Orders, which support payment tracking and expense management.

Maximize your agency’s efficiency with Productive’s dynamic resource management tools, including resource planning, employee allocation based on work hours, and utilization analytics.

It offers features such as workload balancing with indicators of current capacity, time off requests, placeholders for potential and external staff, and tentative scheduling for projects in the pipeline.

Additionally, you can link your bookings with your time tracking, so that entries are created based on scheduled hours.

Through analysis of billable hours and workforce scheduling, Productive delivers valuable insights into workload distribution, identifying overutilized teams and available employees. Check our article on creating a resource management plan.

Productive provides a streamlined agency CRM to foster collaboration among sales, marketing, and production teams. Customize the stages in your sales pipeline, monitor deals, and use the sales feed for better communication.

Additional features include managing reasons for lost deals, revenue forecasting, performance analysis by sales reps, and other key insights.

The sales feature is integrated with the budgeting feature — this means that you can access data on your service rates, build estimates and export quotes as PDF files.

Learn more about the benefits of CRM tools.

Productive offers various ways to get insights into key agency metrics: you can use one of the 50+ agency-focused templates or build your report from scratch. The Reporting feature sources data from various platform activities and features, including Budgeting, Time Tracking, Resourcing, Billing, Sales, and more.

To share this data with other members of your teams, you can sync your reports with Slack or email. You can also create customized dashboards with the platform, insert specific reports, and share it with key employees.

For managing your high-level project planning, Productive offers various layouts. Organize your workspace with the Gantt, Kanban, List, Calendar view, and more.

For task management, Productive offers simple hierarchies with milestones, dependencies, subtasks, and to-dos. You can customize task statuses, automate updates with notifications, upload and share files, track time from tasks, and more.

Productive also provides free client access. With specific permissions, clients can open, view, and comment on tasks, as well as view certain budgeting information.

Additional features include: Docs, Productive AI, Automations, Permission Builder

Integrations include: Xero, QuickBooks, HubSpot, BambooHR, Zapier, Slack, Jira, Google Calendar, and more.

Productive offers a 14-day free trial to check what the software can do for your business.

SAP is one of the leading providers of ERP solutions. The vendor offers a suite of enterprise resource planning software modules, including absence management, analytics, invoicing, supply chain management, digital manufacturing, and more.

Key features:

SAP’s cloud-based software, SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers a customizable platform with a variety of modules for business requirements. The biggest downside noted by users on Capterra is that the tool is “not very intuitive”. This can make the implementation and adoption a lengthy process, especially for businesses with employees of varying expertise levels.

The Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP is an ERP suite that supports teams with artificial intelligence, process optimization, and real-time analytics.

Key features:

Users on Capterra state that:

On the other hand, the Oracle ERP Cloud has some of the typical downsides of ERP solutions: it can be difficult to implement, the UI is not as polished as some similar agency project management solutions, and the customizable nature of the platform can impact usability.

The Dynamics 365 suite offers solutions for marketing and sales, enterprise resource planning (ERP),  finances, customer service, and more.

Key features:

Certain Capterra users praise the Dynamics 365 suite for having a low cost to entry for CRM tools. On the flipside, users report that interactions with customer service can be less than ideal. Similarly to other ERP solutions, the customer interface and implementation time tend to be a drawback.

Learn more on how Microsoft Project performs as an Avaza alternative.

The Infor CloudSuite offers a cloud platform for industries including distribution, manufacturing, and service industries.

Key features:

Capterra users note that while Infor M3 offers extensive customization options, this flexibility can lead to complexity in configuration and implementation. Reviews also mention the potential need for numerous workarounds and repeated adjustments to adapt the system to specific business functions. With its financial tools and industry-specific features, Infor can be a good choice for business growth.

EPICOR ERP offers a variety of ERP software, including Epicor BisTrack, Epicor Eclipse, Epicor Indago, Epicor Kinetic, Epicor Vision.

Key features:

Similarly to other ERP solutions on this list, Epicor ERP provides solutions for a range of industries and business processes. One of the downside of Epicor offering various modules is that research on pricing and features, and finding the best version of the tool for you, requires getting in touch with the vendor.

According to research by Deloitte, the top barriers to successful implementation of ERP include:

These statistics indicate the strategies you need to consider for successful ERP implementation. To overcome resistance to change and ensure sponsorship, you need buy-in from the top brass. While you need to clarify the benefits of ERP, make sure not to oversell the impact—ROI from software implementation can take time.

Finally, create a plan of action by delegating a software champion, setting reasonable deadlines, identifying desired results, and organizing regular testing and feedback sessions.

Some of the main criteria businesses should consider when selecting their cloud ERP include:

While most tools offer scalability, user-friendliness, and customer service are often points that various tools stumble on.

Consider Productive if you’re looking for an enterprise project management system that offers all three and has a range of features for professional services agencies.

Created by industry veterans, this comprehensive tool can help agencies manage all aspects of their daily operations and strategic planning with real-time data.

Book a demo today to discover what Productive can do for your business.

Some examples of ERP systems include Productive for professional services businesses, Oracle NetSuite, SAP Business One, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. These tools streamline operations, improve efficiency, and support decision-making.

The 3 common types of ERP include cloud-based, on-premise, and hybrid. Cloud-based ERP systems are more straightforward to implement and are usually more affordable. On-premise systems require a higher investment in time and money but provide more data protection. Hybrid systems combine features of the two types.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are business solutions that combine various operations into a single platform. This can include financial management, HR, customer relationship management, and industry-specific features. They aim to improve efficiency and support informed decision-making.

An example of ERP with real-time data is Productive, the all-in-one software for agencies. An example is the resource planning module, which lets businesses forecast critical metrics such as budget burn, revenue, and profit margins. Reallocating resources impacts these metrics in real time, letting project managers make decisions based on reliable data.