We often forget that Sports and Entertainment organizations are also businesses! However, Sports and Entertainment organizations are disproportionally impacted by industry, consumer, and technology trends given their intense relationship with their fan base.
This requires these organizations to be more focused on their business and fan interactions, and choose technology based on how it can positively contribute to their organization-wide strategic goals.
We also live in the app economy, accustomed to finding “an app for that” for nearly all situations.
This ‘on-demand’ consumer and fan expectation is now an enterprise expectation. And business software vendors are adapting to meet the app-economy opportunities, creating an increase of disconnected and siloed apps. Gartner and IDC estimate there is a backlog of over 500M apps and a shortage of over 2M developers.
To help meet this burgeoning demand, we saw a 300% increase in the introduction of low code/no code (LCNC) platforms in the last three years. The result is LCNC platforms are taking center stage in organizations of all sizes from mom-and-pop startups to Fortune 500 corporations. Gartner placed Microsoft Power Platform as a leader in the industry’s LCNC platform providers with essentially 100% adoption across the Fortune 500 landscape.
How ERP Implementation Utilizes LCNC Technology
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) used to be the center of the enterprise pie. After all, wasn’t that the intent for ERP to begin with?
How we used to picture ERP in an Enterprise.
However, in the modern business enterprise, ERP opened the door to best-of-breed applications and is only one of the many apps that run an enterprise organization. As such, ERP is expected to ‘play nice’ with the entire organization’s vision, strategy and execution and is now just one piece of the larger enterprise pie.
How we picture ERP in an enterprise today.
Additionally, in this new LCNC ecosystem, businesses expect to be able to easily integrate, customize and extend their ERP/Financials investment with the same toolset they use to build their business-specific edge experiences. This significantly lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO) and increases business return on investment (ROI). The ecosystem is about your entire enterprise and enabling business optimization across the whole organization.
The question has gone from, “Which ERP should we buy,” to ‘Which ERP enables our long-term business roadmap?”.
Now that we understand an ERP product is just a part of the organization portfolio, we must clearly define the long-term business and organization holistic vision, as well as how the ERP solution investment will contribute to and support the roadmap for goals such as:
- Ticket sales
- Group sales
- Sponsorship sales
- Customer and fan service
- Fan and guest engagement
- Asset management
- BI/BA reporting
- Shopping engagement
- Just-in-time shopping ads and discounts
- Services and product definitions
- Pricing
- Discounting management
- Revenue recognition complexities
- Mobile-first useability and engagement
Lastly, you want to select an ERP product that’s going to scale with your growth.
Microsoft Dynamics is the Ultimate Platform for ERP
Microsoft is the only vendor in the market today that can provide the entire business-centric ecosystem and platform, Microsoft’s two ERP packages, Microsoft D365 Finance and Microsoft D365 Business Central, are integral parts of the entire Dynamics 365 suite of business applications, all of which are built on and around the Microsoft Power Platform LCNC ecosystem.
As software, standards, and user experiences have matured, the reality is most like-applications are approaching an unprecedented level of ‘sameness’. The legacy questions we’ve used in the past to choose an ERP application are no longer differentiators in the market.
Specific ERP functionality is important, such as the ability to support multiple entities. Yet, in today’s market, the ‘feature list’ is only a fraction of the overall requirements that should be evaluated.
Below is a commonly recommended top-level list for ERP evaluation and selection, focusing on the business roadmap, value, and organization-wide productivity.
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Attribute
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Evaluation Criteria
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Productivity
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How an ERP solution can make you and your staff more productive
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Functionality
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What the solution does regarding daily accounting and business management functions and beyond
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Technology
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How the product leverages technology in terms of usability, customizability, and maintainability
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Value
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How the product maximizes features and functions versus cost for the usable lifetime of the product
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Risk
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How the product minimizes risk and facilitates security
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You Don’t Just Need the Microsoft Ecosystem, You Also Need a Partner
Enavate is the only Microsoft partner that can provide a truly holistic, end-to-end product offering with native emphasis on business value optimization. With the use of the Power Platform and its dedicated support for the entire Dynamics 365 family of products, including Dynamics 365 Finance and Business Central, we believe your continued partnership with Microsoft and its ecosystem of products is your best business value solution.
To learn more about how Microsoft’s Power Platform can transform your business and scale your growth to new heights, reach out to an Enavate expert today.
