For decades now, technology has been transforming the way businesses function, setting new benchmarks when it comes to efficiency and scalability.
Cycles that once took months have been reduced to mere minutes and that too with fewer people involved. So much value has been put on certain types of technologies that today it’s hard to find a large enterprise without an ERP System.
But while we can spend hours going on and on about what technology has done for the world, one thing is for certain. It has left gaps.
If you look at how many people in a large organization use its ERP system, the number is tiny. How many small businesses use ERP? Again tiny. How much data is actually connected from field teams and partners and not just computed on an excel sheet by managers? Not a lot.
Today if you ask a blue collar worker what the ERP system their organization uses actually helps with, they’ll say nothing and likely throw in a snarky comment about how filling up timesheets are annoying.
Small businesses and frontline workers have essentially been left out of digital transformation plans for decades now. Today, they remain a major roadblock to creating truly digitized value chains. They are the parts of a large enterprise’s workflow that remains manual, that require teams to physically go on site and that have no transparency whatsoever.
When you talk to the teams rolling out technology in larger organizations about this, you often hear about how certain teams and organizations are not digitally savvy enough to be able to use enterprise applications. This may be true. But I believe it’s time to recognize that that is the failure on the part of enterprise software providers, not the users.
With the roll out of UPI, India has proven that there is nothing stopping small businesses and the working population from adopting technology if its value is clear and it’s easy to use. Its success is a clear signal that we are ready for the next wave of digital transformation, one that extends the reach of technology from back offices of big businesses to the frontlines, and perhaps even further, to every connected partner, no matter how small.
The next evolution of ERP needs to be more than just mobile or AI. It needs to make truly and fully connected value chains a reality. It needs to be able to handle the complexity of large businesses and shed functionality for small ones.
Creating disconnected vertical SaaS to digitize small businesses is not enough. We need to build verticalizable SaaS. Software that can help create micro-vertical SaaS solutions for specific communities. Large enterprises can use it for their partner and vendor networks. Industry experts can tailor them to a specific target and solve a real problem. But it all happens in one place. All together. No one needs to download a second app. Data flows where it needs to, when it needs to and is allowed to.
That’s what we are up to at Fieldmobi. We’re digitizing the 99% and extending ERP to the field with our verticalizable SaaS.
The next few months are going to be extremely active at Fieldmobi, starting with the launch of Fieldmobi Frontline on the 20th of March on Product Hunt.
Fieldmobi Frontline (Launching 20th March 2024)
Fieldmobi Frontline creates a direct line to the teams, resources and operations at the frontlines of your business. It is mobile-first and can be used in isolation or connected to an existing ERP system (Enterprise Version) to extend it to the field, making it possible to collect and manage data directly from the source.
Fieldmobi First ERP (Coming Soon)
Fieldmobi First ERP will launch soon after Fieldmobi Frontline and will come with Frontline included. It is a stepping stone ERP system designed for small or undigitized businesses that have never used an ERP system. It uses Frontline to make it possible to structure and manage the master information required to setup an ERP system as well as to ensure that data is constantly fed into the system without hassle. It comes with an AI-based ERP consultant to help with implementation.
Fieldmobi ERP Extensions (Available on Request)
Designed for large enterprises or industry partners, Fieldmobi ERP Extensions are the truly verticalizable parts of our platform, allowing organizations to create a set of customized applications, connect it to its existing ERP system and roll it out among a network of vendors, partners and customers. It also makes it possible to directly connect and collect certain types of data from partners using First ERP.
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