IT System Consolidation to an ERP Vs Stand Alone Applications
Why Point Solutions Fall Short Compared to an Integrated ERP Platform
As businesses grow, their IT environments often become cluttered with stand-alone applications designed to solve individual problems. A finance team might use Xero, the sales team adopts a CRM, customer service adds a ticketing app, and operations install inventory management software. While each system works on its own, together they create silos, duplication, and inefficiencies.
This patchwork of point solutions often evolves organically — one department has a pain point, and a quick-fix app is purchased. Over time, however, the result is an IT hairball: data scattered across spreadsheets, mismatched systems, frustrated staff, and rising subscription costs.
An ERP system consolidation strategy replaces this complexity with a single, unified ERP platform that connects finance, sales, inventory, HR, and operations into one source of truth.
The Best of Breed Software Application Myth
For growing companies, it’s tempting to believe that buying the best stand-alone app for each business function delivers the strongest technology stack. But this “best-of-breed” approach rarely delivers long-term value.
- Costs escalate quickly: what starts as a $50/month solution balloons when licenses scale and integration platforms charge for higher transaction volumes.
- Hidden overhead: staff spend hours reconciling mismatched data between systems, fixing broken integrations, and filling gaps with spreadsheets.
- Process inconsistencies: different apps calculate things differently — for example, one inventory system might value foreign exchange differently than the finance platform, creating accounting headaches.
By contrast, an integrated ERP system runs on a single database. There are no data discrepancies, no middleware surprises, and no reliance on “system glue” managed by internal staff. Updates, security, and new functionality are delivered directly by the ERP vendor.
What Is ERP System Consolidation?
At its core, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a suite of functionally rich applications that share a unified database. This single source of truth:
- Automates business processes.
- Delivers real-time insights.
- Provides built-in compliance and internal controls.
When businesses consolidate IT systems into one ERP, they gain:
- Visibility: live dashboards showing financials, inventory, and customer data.
- Alignment: every department working from the same numbers.
- Scalability: the ability to double revenue without doubling headcount.
- Resilience: the flexibility to pivot when industries change overnight.
How ERP Consolidation Empowers People
One of the biggest concerns leaders raise is: “Will automation reduce control or replace staff?” The reality is the opposite.
ERP platforms introduce rigour, clearly defined processes, and role-based security, protecting sensitive data like payroll or supplier banking details. Instead of replacing people, ERP automation frees them from repetitive manual tasks.
For example, an accounts payable clerk might spend their day processing every invoice. With an ERP, approvals and matching are automated. Staff only intervene when anomalies occur, enabling them to manage far higher volumes with greater accuracy.
This shift doesn’t just improve productivity — it empowers employees by giving them meaningful work and modern tools, which is critical in today’s competitive job market.
How Integrated Technology Can Transform Your Business
Learn how integrated technology can be used to transform your business, in this recorded webinar we discuss integration, automation, compliance and security, as well as the impact of systems on people.
Future-Proofing With a Unified ERP Platform
The last few years have shown how quickly industries can be disrupted. Businesses that relied on siloed point solutions struggled to pivot to e-commerce, manage supply chain shocks, or meet rising customer expectations.
By contrast, companies that had already invested in integrated ERP systems were able to:
- Launch online ordering portals connected to live inventory.
- Automate compliance and reporting.
- Expand distribution capacity without expanding headcount.
With ERP system consolidation, you’re not just investing in technology, you’re building a platform that grows with you. Start with financials, then switch on CRM, inventory, HR, or e-commerce functions as your business evolves.
How Integrated Information Management Systems Effectively Support Growth
At its core an ERP (or Enterprise Resource Planning solution) is a suite of functionally rich applications that are tightly integrated and united by their single unified data source. This is what enables them to power the automation of business processes, provide insights and internal controls.
An integrated information management system collects inputs from every connected department or business function, while recording every transaction.
It delivers a single, clear, consistent – live – view of your business, from any perspective. The other advantage is that everybody is aligned, working towards the same goal, while business decisions are based on the same data.
Integrated Information Management Systems Support People Through Business Change
Implementing change within a business is always a challenge. People who are resistant to change often believe that they will lose autonomy over their function or role, or that they might be replaced by a line of code. Neither of these things is the reality with the implementation of an integrated business management information system, or ERP.
What an ERP does, is apply rigour and well-defined processes to departmental functions and employee roles, while securing sensitive data. It ensures that only those that need to, can access or manage information, such as supplier bank records, or payroll information.
With well defined processes, reliable data and security around your data, you can then start to look into automation of key functions, so the AP/AR person who might be struggling to manage their workload, is suddenly able to handle significantly more work as they go from manually managing every transaction, to only investigating and intervening anomalies, while accuracy and security is also improved.
This major shift in the way your operations are handled can usually only be achieved with an ERP and is the sort of thing that enables your business to go from supplying local cafes to winning a contract with one of the major supermarkets or major retailers. You can’t suddenly scale up your operations by expecting that you’re suddenly going to be able to hire extra heads tomorrow, you need to be able to grow your capacity to do business mostly with the team you’ve already got.
Future Fit and Ready For Change
Point Solutions can be a great enabler for your business to adapt to rapid industry change, as we saw with the continual lockdowns, many businesses made the leap into true e-commerce for the first time.
However, we also witnessed what happened to the businesses that couldn’t adapt fast enough. The businesses who weren’t able to go from bricks and mortar with point solutions for each function, couldn’t rapidly incorporate their new e-commerce website, with online POS, live inventory management and expand their distribution systems.
Business information management systems start with robust financial systems and then you switch on the additional business functions, or functionally specific applications, as they’re needed. So even if you’re a bricks and mortar business, with the right information management system, processes, and automation in place, you are already on your toes at the starting block ready with everything in place to pivot your business as your industry is rocked overnight.
