Choosing the ideal ERP software is similar to picking a new dress. You want something that accentuates your company’s values and streamlines your practices seamlessly. There are various ERP programs and types to choose from, including SaaS ERP, or subscription-as-a-service, also known as cloud software. Not sure about the cloud? SelectHub will break down ERP, on-premise solutions, cloud and SaaS software, the top SaaS benefits and top SaaS platforms.

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What is ERP?

Let’s start with the basics. In a nutshell, ERP is a software type with features that cover various departments within an organization. These departments include:

• Accounting
• Manufacturing
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
• HR
• Marketing Automation (MA)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Business Intelligence (BI)
• And more!

Think of this program as a burger, and the features are different toppings: they all work together to guarantee your company meets expectations and satisfies your clients.

What is On-Premise Software?

On-premise is a deployment option for solutions to run on your hard drive and company server. It’s only available at one location. If your company is small or mid-sized and you’re not looking to expand regionally or globally, this option may be your cup of tea.

Explaining the Cloud and SaaS

It’s easy to confuse cloud and SaaS, but in actuality, they’re the same.

Cloud and SaaS programs offer accessible tools, features and data through the internet instead of your company servers and hard drives. It’s also available on various mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops and more. If you have an enterprise with several locations and global partners, this deployment option may justify your needs. They also run on a subscription-based model with different payment plans, making it a little more affordable than on-premise applications.

Benefits

These programs offer various advantages for you and your organization, from automatic updates to enhanced data security and a user-friendly interface.

• Better and Faster Scalability: Implement these systems to grow your business as you add more staff, tools, departments, locations, etc., rapidly.
• Instant Upgrades: Since SaaS ERP is available through vendors, they usually provide the solution with automatic updates.
• Modern and User-Friendly Software Interface: The interface is typically sleeker and easier to use with smooth navigating.
• Cheaper Compared to On-Premise: A standard ERP can run up to thousands of dollars. However, most cloud programs have a subscription or pay-as-you-go model that’s less threatening to your wallet.
• Improved Data Security: Cloud software usually offers various security tactics to keep critical data protected. Two-step or multi-factor authentication, for example, enables you and employees to input two or more methods when signing into the system, such as a password and text message verification, a fingerprint or answers to security questions. Data encryption scrambles your data into non-readable codes that are only decipherable with a decryption key.

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Top SaaS ERP Solutions

It’s time to review SelectHub’s picks for this software type. Be sure to observe our in-depth requirements template to create a wishlist of the top capabilities you’re searching for in a new platform.

Oracle ERP Cloud

Oracle ERP Cloud is a suite of various cloud programs such as:

• Financial Management
• Project Management
• Procurement
• Risk Management
• Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Analytics
• Adaptive Intelligent

It serves companies of all sizes and aids various industries such as financial services, healthcare, technology and services, government administration and more.

A preview of Oracle ERP Cloud.

Features

Oracle Financials Cloud

Link information from various sources, including BI, social and transactions, among others. Construct diverse role-based dashboards. The infolets dashboards showcase KPI according to transaction statuses, evaluates cash positions and predict money necessities. Its other tools include:

• Ledger and Analytics
• Payables and Assets
• Revenue Management
• Receivables Management
• Collections Management
• Expenses Management

Oracle Accounting Hub Cloud

This module streamlines bookkeeping from third-party transactional systems via supporting users through business insights with references that study outcomes and drill down into sub-ledgers. The accounting extension permits you to create sub-ledgers for distinct and divided transactional and general ledger systems. Export entries that align with Oracle’s general ledger formats. Govern bookkeeping procedures with automatic general ledger changes. You may also verify or fix errors.

Oracle Procurement Cloud

Employ guided negotiation creation, online supplier negotiations and reusable negotiation tactics and templates. You may also question the library for requirements, two-stage requests for quotes (RFQ), team scoring, the negotiation landing page with vital activities and metrics, surrogate building and more. You may also:

• Govern supplier qualification information.
• Assort supplier data into qualifications.
• Review particular qualification areas and evaluate vendors.
• Implement internal and external information sources.
• And more!

Oracle Project Portfolio Management Cloud

Execute project management, resource management, task management, project cost control, project billing and contracts, grants management and analytics. The project management module offers team collaboration to plot and allocate projects and merge scheduling and project planning accessories. The task management extension supports project and non-project tasks collaboration, task conversation interactions, document annotations, etc.

Oracle Risk Management Cloud

Work with artificial intelligence (AI)-embedded tools to automate complex analyses for ERP role design, segregation of duties (SOD), data privacy and financial fraud prevention. The risk management tool certifies user access to private information and appliances that meet Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance with workflows that need review or are ready for consent. Simplify control assessments, certifying compliance and auditor collaboration. This attribute also ciphers inherent risk with likelihood, impact and analysis models. Review risks with context models to accept, watch or address actions.

Oracle EPM Cloud

Initiate financial and operational designs, close and consolidation, data management, internal and external documentation and profitability management processes. Utilize interactive reporting and dashboard components for KPI monitoring and trend exhibitions. Employ workflow engines to superintend approvals and workflows in all business processes. Manage long-range scenario modeling for financial statement planning, workforce planning and more.

Oracle SCM Cloud

Permit businesses such as manufacturers, for example, to govern supply chains with planning, logistics, inventory management, order management, procurement, PLM, manufacturing, maintenance, the internet of things (IoT), blockchain and more.

Advantages

Oracle ERP Cloud contains differentiators that keep it ahead of its SaaS competitors.

• Dashboard with Accounting Infolets: Supervise operations, track transaction statuses and highlight issues or exceptions that may need responses.
• Language Support: Manage internationalization support such as numbers, dates, names and address formatting to translate into 26 different languages.
• Customer Ranking: Rank clients with all-inclusive scores to better manage customer cash flows.
• Discount Creation: Create vendor-specific offers automatically for early payments of outstanding payables that align with real-time supplier profiles and risk data.

Limitations

Although this program has various features and benefits, it comes with a few drawbacks. These limitations include:

• It doesn’t have an Android or iOS app.
• Has limited Oracle Transaction Intelligence (BI) for looking up information.
• Users have to link API manually to get live exchange rates.
• Users can’t post invoices to the solution.
• Lacks implementation partners who possess practical and technical experiences.
• Doesn’t offer free trials.

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Acumatica Cloud ERP

Acumatica Cloud ERP is a suite that caters to diverse industries such as distribution, manufacturing, service, retail e-commerce, construction and more. It’s also available on-premise and has iOS and Android apps.

An example of Acumatica Cloud ERP.

Features

• Financial Management: Work with several accounting functionalities to track daily financial operations and create quarterly or annual financial statements. It has a general ledger, accounts payable, cash and tax management, fixed assets and payroll management.
• CRM: Supervise leads, contacts, opportunities and customer accounts. Work with a consolidated view for client records for marketing, quoting and sales to delivery and post-sales support in a centralized data. This tool also measures campaign performances and tracks conversions while communicating with contacts.
• Order Management: Draft sales quotes, sales orders and purchase orders. Manage price trackings, current stock level verifications, discount additions, quote inputting, shipment producing and sales order fulfillment. Check credit information automatically while handling order processing and automatically release credit holds after inputting payments.
• Inventory Management: Obtain real-time access to available stock materials, inventory costs and items in transit. Receive materials at particular locations and change default lot and serial numbers, valuation procedures, accounts and more.
• Manufacturing Management: Work with a multi-site cloud manufacturing control and planning system for various workflows, including make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, project-center, job shop, batch and repetitive. Merge production planning and shop floor with patron management, sales orders, inventory, purchasing, accounting and financial reporting.
• Construction Management: Administer projects, tasks, costs, capacity and link opportunities, contracts, schedules, budgets, change orders, subcontracts and compliances. Track activities, issues, change orders and project documents. Combine financials, job cost accounting, project management, payroll, inventory, service management, CRM, mobile and more.
• Commerce Management: Superintend e-commerce, orders, inventory, picking-packing-shipping, returns, customer support and accounting in one dashboard. Obtain customer-specific pricing, variant products, multiple warehouses, discounts and promotions and shipment tracking, amongst others.
• Service Management: Track and manage field services by sharing the best practices, handling manual operations automatically and tracking service inventory via merging information, people and resources. Streamline processes, track resource obligations and match tasks to available resources.
• Forecasting: Supervise costs, payroll, taxes, profits and more with revenue balances, percentages completed and finished contract accounting with various entities, currencies and languages.
• Automatic Freight Cost Allocation: Allocate freight costs automatically or manually on sales orders, shipments and bills.
• Cost Tracking: Track material and labor costs while managing products. Compare standard and planned production costs to actual expenditures.
• Employee Tracking: Track employee details by sub-job capabilities to undertake needs and award strong workers.
• Warranty Management: Initiate warranty offers for customers and specify parts under warranty. Set up multidimensional contracts to help track policies from sales to repair in the field and relay what is and is not covered.
• Equipment Maintenance: Chronicle equipment or machinery’s entire history at a customer location and track repair parts in inventory.

Advantages

Acumatica Cloud ERP offers several benefits that set it apart from other programs. These differentiators include:

• Globalization and Localization: Support localized and international functionality with cloud multi-currency, multi-language and multi-company features.
• Data Migration: Transfer accounts payable and receivable historical information from a legacy or on-premise system to Acumatica, such as open balances, original amounts and dates without altering your general ledger.
• Discount Set-Up: Set multiple rules and sequences manually or automatically and add the suitable discount combination.
• Multiple Valuation Methods: Leverage standard costs, moving averages, first in, first out (FIFO) and item-specific methods for valuing inventory items. You may also execute several valuation methods for different inventory items.
• Workflow Automation: Program immediate shipping and receiving practices and use automated reporting and quality controls for return management.

Limitations

This solution, like most, comes with a few drawbacks. These limitations include:

• Not offering a free trial.
• Not providing an action tab on the print screen to save information.
• The self-hosting capability is only for Windows OS.

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SAP S/4 HANA

SAP S/4 HANA is a program that caters to businesses of all sizes and serves a multitude of industries such as:

• Automotive
• Banking
• Chemicals
• Engineering
• Insurance
• Packaging
• Telecommunications
• Travel (Both Airline and Cargo)
• And more.

A preview of SAP S/4 HANA.

Features

Asset Management

Plan, schedule and execute maintenance activities for assets. Initiate planned and unplanned maintenance tasks and permit technicians to detect, document and address malfunctions and emergencies. Monitor time-sensitive work throughout various maintenance activities and spare parts inventory. Get an overview of due maintenance orders, produce schedules with scope and workload simulations and track task statuses.

Procurement

Utilize this accessory to obtain insights into purchasing by evaluating purchase orders, purchase requisitions, invoices and contracts. Study supplier performance with current information, collect, delegate, review and access various sourcing data points in one centralized location and create procurement documentation automatically or manually.

Sales Management

Regulate order-to-cash procedures throughout all touchpoints, channels and functions with multichannel, role-based authorization to real-time information. Implement the contract management component to stow conditions. It allows you to obtain contracts online, automate contract creations and workflow usage, document version management and standardize reviews, approvals and processing.

Financial Management

Leverage this tool for bookkeeping and accounting procedures, treasury and financial risk processes, collaborative finance operation support, real-estate management and more. Appraise profit and margin contributions with real-time reporting, predictive analytics and integrated business scheduling. Pinpoint product and service mix for customers to distribute simplified invoices, govern credit scoring and address errors.

SCM

Work with transportation management, warehouse management, product availability management and goods movement management. This program takes business rules, material availability and allocation guidelines under consideration when determining product availability and confirms customer dates. Combine with transportation management and control warehouse activities and operations through amplifying asset and overall throughput with the top picking, packing and shipping methodologies.

Manufacturing

Coordinate all manufacturing procedures, including material requirements and inventory. Tailor plans that coincide with real-time information from businesses, supplier networks and plant floors. Draft intricate assembly plans that encompass:

• Material requirements
• Productions
• Capacity planning
• Bill of materials (BOMs)
• Routing
• Factory layout
• Machine models

Also, carry out lean control, continuous improvements and just-in-time replenishments for production and material flow tracking.

Advantages

This platform comes with various strengths that set it apart from other SaaS ERPs.

• Embedded AI Capabilities: Implement intelligent accruals management, which closes books with rapid purchase order transformations. Leverage defect code proposals that pull up a catalog of errors based on free-text entries. Utilize the financial journal entries with intelligent robotic process automation to automate economic journal data collecting, extracting and validating from emails and mass data uploads.
• Machine Learning: Permit dynamic adjustments for buffer levels based on predicted lead time and stocking transfer materials. Offer recommendations for effective decision making and cash discount recording.
• Software Developer Kit (SDK): Permit custom application creations, vertical solutions and extensions with Java libraries, JavaScript libraries, project templates and a continuous delivery toolkit.

Limitations

SAP S/4 HANA, like most software, contains cons. These drawbacks include:

• All accessories don’t support embedded analytics tools.
• It lacks resource administration for scheduling and needs third-party software.
• Does not have applications for iOS or Android devices.
• The database needs new integrations and extensions to other programs.
• The cloud suite is incomplete and possesses entities that are not on the same data model or platform, which leads to integration and cost issues for clients.
• It doesn’t merge with EPM.

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Oracle NetSuite ERP

Oracle NetSuite ERP is a cloud platform that caters to businesses of all sizes while serving the advertising, consulting, education, financial services and retail services industries, among others. It’s also available as an application for iOS and Android devices.

An example of Oracle NetSuite ERP.

Features

Financial Planning

Implement the calculation engine to lodge business logic with aggregation and financial planning analysis and reporting. Functionalities include Capex planning, building and maintaining travel and expense plans, automating indirect expense distribution, predictive planning that generates a dashboard and offers predictions for future results and more. It also integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word and PowerPoint with Smart View for Office.

Order Management

Create operation flows for sales quotes, order fulfillment and more. Obtain an omnichannel price management system to ensure real-time pricing updates across all channels to customers. Work with multi-currency pricing management, which offers multiple price levels, customer and currency-specific pricing, dollar and percentage discounts, promotion codes and transaction-level gross profit analysis. The returns management tool offers return merchandise authorization (RMA) management to trace issues and observe warranty profile management such as coverage, start date, span and more. You can include these qualities for particular merchandise and automating the refund process.

Production Management

Receive real-time transparency of production procedures, including sales orders and work order handling. It also offers product data management, planning and scheduling, automatic quality control and manufacturing execution. Integrate lot tracking functionality to offer companies flexibility in set batch sizes during the production process and create batch records.

Warehouse and Fulfillment

Implement this tool to manage distribution procedures with radio frequency (RF) device directed putaway and tasks driven by tailored, user-set strategies and other tools like:

• Wave management
• Cartonization
• Cycle count planning
• Real-time inventory updates
• Shipping system integrations

Utilize the inbound logistics accessory to manage open purchase orders, transfer orders and inbound units. The outbound logistics tool governs products from the end of production to fulfillment. Lastly, the inventory management attribute provides refilling for stocks, cycle counting, lot tracking and warehousing.

Procurement

Simplify the procure-to-pay process by automating and linking critical procurement payments and offering approval and matching workflows. The sourcing tool manages vendors, handles RFQs, defines contracts and drives procurement policies. The purchasing appliance automates requisitioning and purchasing processes from user-configurable procurement dashboards. Finally, the payment extension matches purchase orders, item receipts and vendor bills with customizable practices.

Strategic Workforce Planning

Execute planning and budgeting with workforce planning and related expenses, including headcounts, salaries and compensation planning by aligning the needs and priorities of the company with those in the workforce.

Advantages

This program has various strengths that help it outdo the competition.

• Built-In BI: Implement the built-in BI tools to merge data with visual analytics to create actionable business insights.
• Customization: The SuiteCloud developer tools offer a cloud customization atmosphere to align with business needs or create new applications. Working with workflow management, scripting, analytics, web services and more.
• Dynamic Modeling: Support modeling, analysis and bi-directional integration in Excel for modeling data.
• Real-Time Alert: Establish user-defined alerts for understanding the supply chain status.
• Cost Variances: Detect and address cost variances as they appear.
• Shelf-Life Tracking: Obtain expiration and shelf-life tracking via the warehouse management appliance.

Limitations

Although this solution offers myriad benefits and features, it comes with limitations. These cons include:

• A poorly-rated iOS application because the transnational records are not functioning correctly.
• Not having a free trial.
• Does not offer a fully relational database export.
• Does not support customization with industry-standard tools.

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Kinetic

Kinetic, formerly known as Epicor ERP, is a manufacturing system for small and mid-sized businesses. It’s also available as an app for iOS and Android devices.

An example of Kinetic.

Features

• CRM: Work with contact management, lead and opportunity management, case management and marketing management to ensure you’re reaching out to and gathering the ideal information from clients.
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM): The DocStar ECM is a tactical tool that permits you to administer content from start to finish. Manage text, PDF, email, video and other HTML files.
• Planning and Scheduling: Govern various warehouses, plants, offices and companies in a single location. Handle forecasting, production scheduling and material requirements planning (MRP).
• Project Management: Implement estimation, planning, scheduling, costing and supply chain logistics and provide users with project control and analysis. Merge project planning, resource management, time and expense management, billing and revenue recognition that follows regulations and meets accounting standards.
• Human Capital Management: Support employees to tackle job ownership with self-managing goals and gauging their achievements effectively. Review the required skills for organizations, current talent and gaps that need filling. Leverage talent management, compensation management, timesheets, absence management and employee self-service.
• BI and Business Analytics (BA): This tool possesses reports, dashboards and trackers called business activity queries (BAQs). It offers real-time virtual operational queries with a drag-and-drop wizard and permits you to classify, summarize and dive deeper into data.
• Financial Management: The reporting and analytics tools let you gauge business performance against KPIs and offer visibility throughout all business departments via BI and analytical tools. Manage automated budget approval processes with tailored multi-level operations and tasks assigned to submitters and validators.
• Production Management: Utilize advanced quality management and PLM to meet industry and standard regulations, measure quality and monitor a product’s lifecycle from beginning to end.
• Service and Asset Management: This attribute advocates lean service organization requirements with escalation management that oversees customer service level agreements and offers visibility risks and compliance errors.
• SCM: Leverage the demand management extension to superintend inventory levels with statistical forecasting and planning tools. Monitor incoming and outgoing items for orders, subcontract parts to send to vendors, track all shipments and update purchase orders as necessary.
• Product Management: Employ the PLM accessory to gain product data management (PDM), computer-aided design (CAD)-integrated and technical document management skills. The engineering change management (ECN) appliance assorts engineering design changes and permits designers to create and manage ECNs through a CAD program.
• Enterprise Risk Management: Work with application-level risk mitigation tools and business process management (BPM) that offers audit trails and workflow automation. It also consists of advanced quality management (AQM), which offers full audit trail transparency for inventory transactions and provides advanced user, role and group security to establish responsibility separations.
• Sales Management: Conduct estimate and quote management, order management, demand management and point of sales management to produce and track all customer or potential RFQs. You may also check a customer’s credit status online at quote, order or shipment entries.
• E-Commerce Connect: Interact with B2B and B2C channel support and let users launch an e-commerce site that’s accessible on any mobile device. Review stock levels in real time, offer pricing strategies for the online channel with tailored pricing by customer, contract or product list and manage all dealer activities through a single seamless interface.
• Environmental and Energy Management: Govern company initiatives concerning carbon emissions, energy conservation and supply chain feasibility.
• Collaboration: Merge digital messaging and worker conversations with ERP information while authorizing users to share and capture knowledge across various departments.

Advantages

Kinetic offers various differentiators that set it apart from its alternatives.

• Governance Risk Compliance: Implement corporate governance tools to condense financial information. Implement built-in application-level business process management tools to align with risk management needs.
• IoT-Enabled: Merge Microsoft Azure IoT Hub with Kinetic information with estimated date of departure (EDD) and estimated date of arrival (EDA) accessories.
• AI-Enabled Virtual Agent: Automate and answer questions concerning data with visuals. Receive prompt answers after asking questions and facility repetitive responsibilities such as quoting and scheduling.
• Commerce Connect: Administer one product repository by merging Kinetic with other programs.
• Customer Connect: Produce special promotions and permit patrons to perform repeat purchasing.
• Salesforce Integration: Integrate this program with Salesforce, contact management system and the CRM platform to keep everything in sync.

Limitations

This program, like so many others, has a vast amount of benefits and features. But it also comes with a few setbacks. These drawbacks include:

• Difficult customization methods that a C programmer can only do.
• Requires integration points to automate data feeds.
• Most features need additional modules or customizations to work with business processes.

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Moving Forward

Whether you choose to invest in a SaaS ERP or on-premise solution, it’s essential to pick the software that best aligns with your company’s needs and requirements. For more ERP options, check out our in-depth comparison and pricing guides.

Which SaaS ERP is your top pick and why? Let us know in the comments!