Artificial intelligence and ERP

Artificial intelligence transforms the future ERP solutions

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, will undoubtedly change and influence the future of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and will undoubtedly have a decisive impact on the business of the future, regardless of size or industry, but in order to gain value from the new technological advances the companies need to revise their current technology strategies and be prepared to change and adapt to the developments.

If the technology is used optimally, AI will use intelligent software applications to improve the internal management structure and create a smarter technology infrastructure, and thus optimize the business processes in each individual company. To accommodate the new technology, it is important that you are flexible and as a company prepared to reviewyour current IT strategies.

Artificial intelligence as an integrated part of the ERP system will affect the very essence of daily operations. AI solutions will most likely take over routine tasks currently performed by humans. Therefore, the development of the new technology is also driven by an increasing need to reduce business operating costs by supporting employees' workflows, thus enhancing the efficiency of the organization's operations as a whole. The development of artificial intelligence is, in other words, a development the companies must follow if they wants to stay efficient and competitive.

Three ways in which artificial intelligence will improve ERP

Improved decision making process
One of the ERP system's main functions is to help businesses improve and streamline their workflow and to make better decisions about everything from production to strategy. Artificial intelligence can improve these functionalities by analyzing larger datasets than it was previously possible. In addition, artificial intelligence can also be used to read historical data and from these data learn from earlier behavioral patterns.

Automation of data input a heavy workload
Manual entry of data into the ERP system is for many companies a heavy workload and therefore costs a lot of man-hours. In addition to being a major expense, manual data entry can create additional costs in the form of typing errors. Artificial intelligence combined with ERP can learn from the data sources and create workflows and reduce the time it takes to load data and not least the likelihood that there will be errors in the inserted data.

Workflow Enhancement
The combination of artificial intelligence and ERP can also improve the business processes. By analyzing historical data, the systems will be able to suggest the most effective internal work processes. For example, by reading an already established workflow, AI will be able to perform the next task and continuously provide the necessary information needed to complete that task. The result is not only that the tasks are carried out effortlessly and without mistakes, but also that the workflow are streamlined and that the work processes are optimized.

Data handling

As the ERP systems evolve, companies have increasingly gained access to a huge amount of data. This data should be converted into meaningful information and thus ultimately result in decisions and actions that can be crucial for the company's operations and growth.

However, data handling has been challenged by the massive growth of unstructured data that companies have been able to capture without necessarily having a clear approach to how this data is used correctly.

As a company, several steps can be taken to counter the handling of the increasing amount of data. Among these is to integrate an efficient ERP system, a big data solution that can handle both structured and unstructured data, a business analytics tool that can organize and present data in a clear and user-friendly way etc., but in the near future also AI solutions that can learn, speak, read, respond, predict and even reason, can be effective tools to handle the ever-increasing amount of data.

Microsoft Cognitive Services

Cognitive Services is now what Microsoft used to call Microsoft Project Oxford. However, since Project Oxford, Microsoft has added new functionalities and Cognitive Services today consists of a number of intelligent API's (Application Programming Interface). An API is a software interface that allows a piece of software to interact with other software. The intelligent API's in Cognitive Services work across the platform and deliver intelligent data through, for example, automatic face recognition, voice recognition and video stabilization.

Artificial intelligence in NAV 2018

Microsoft has announced that artificial intelligence through Cognitive Services becomes part of NAV 2018 'Tenerife'. Therefore there will in NAV 2018 be functionality for auto-recognition of images, such as an item, or, in HR context, a person in your company.

The future of ERP

Artificial intelligence has just begun to appear in ERP applications and the addition of the new technology is still a relatively new phenomenon, but the possibilities artificial intelligence adds to the ERP systems must be said to be unlimited. For example, we currently see the technology used to automate data entry and streamline workflows, but it is already clear that the combination of artificial intelligence and ERP is a very effective combination and that companies who understand how to utilize it will gain great value and competitive advantage from the new technology.