ERP Maintenance Explained (Benefits + Management Strategies)

Scaling a company requires efficient resource planning, ensuring every workflow moves to its goal without any roadblocks. That’s why you need an ERP system that centralizes CRM data, inventory, supply chain, and other processes, ensuring: 

• Real-time visibility into stocks
• Accurate management of customized pricing, bulk discounts, and contract-specific terms
• Visibility into accurate business data
• Automated invoicing and payment processing

However, like any other technology, an ERP system needs maintenance to keep working to its fullest capabilities. But how do you maintain a complex ERP system without hindering workflow? Let’s find out:

Short on Time? Here Are The Key Takeaways

• Routine ERP maintenance is essential to ensure data accuracy, workflow efficiency, and alignment with current business needs. 
• ERP maintenance consists of four types: preventive, corrective, adaptive, and perfective.
• Besides devising an ERP maintenance plan and running tests and reviews, you must choose an ERP that offers eCommerce analytics and integrates with your existing tech stack.

What is ERP Maintenance?

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) maintenance refers to the ongoing process of managing, updating, and optimizing an ERP system after its initial implementation. The goal is to ensure the software’s performance, reliability, and data integrity.

Here’s why ERP maintenance should be a priority for efficient B2B data management:

• Regular ERP maintenance reduces unexpected system failures, preventing operational disruptions and costly downtime.
• It ensures that your ERP B2B data is accurate and up-to-date, which is critical for seamless inventory management, precise financial reporting, and smooth customer relationship management. 
• B2B companies process large transaction volumes with sensitive client information. Frequent ERP audits prevent leaks of these data sets, ensuring compliance. 
• Regular ERP maintenance updates your system to support B2B eCommerce scalability and performance.
• It lets you identify and fix small issues before they escalate, which could require costly repairs or even system overhauls.

Types of ERP maintenance

ERP maintenance is of several types, and each addresses the system’s specific needs, ensuring optimal performance and alignment with business objectives. Here are some notable ones:

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive ERP maintenance is the process of proactive upkeep of your ERP system to prevent potential issues before they arise. It helps companies avoid: 

• Unexpected downtimes and system failures
• Sudden data loss

Preventive maintenance of your ERP system typically involves: 

• Regularly implementing software updates that your ERP vendor provides, ensuring the system has all the latest features and bug fixes.
• Monitoring system performance to identify and address any bottlenecks or slowdowns before they escalate and impact operations.
• Indexing, archiving, and cleaning up duplicate sets to maintain current and compliant B2B data.
• Scheduling routine backups to prevent data loss in case of sudden system failure or cyber-attacks.
• Planning and implementing hardware upgrades to support the growing B2B data integration on the ERP system.

Corrective Maintenance

Corrective ERP maintenance is actions you take to identify, repair, restore, or fix issues in your ERP system. Unlike preventive maintenance, this approach is reactive and solves existing problems to restore the system's optimal efficiency. 

Usual corrective maintenance actions B2B companies run include: 

• Identifying the issues through root cause analysis.
• Repairing or restoring the affected data to ensure data integrity.
• Promptly restoring data from backups to minimize impact on operations.
• Repairing or replacing faulty hardware to restore system functionality.
• Implementing data recovery plans in cases of widespread data loss.

Adaptive Maintenance

Adaptive ERP maintenance refers to the process of modifying the resource planning system to meet new organizational requirements or regulatory standards. This type of ERP maintenance doesn’t necessarily target an existing problem. Its goal is to ensure your ERP system grows with your company, upholding optimum efficiency as you scale.

Adaptive maintenance involves:

• Running predictive eCommerce analytics to gauge the upcoming B2B order demand and the potential load your ERP system will need to handle.
• Recognizing when it's time to let your ERP focus on what it does best, that is, resource planning, and use a more specialized eCommerce software for tasks outside its intended use. 
• Adding new features, integrations, ERP maintenance modules, and opting for advanced add-ons to support growing B2B commerce needs.
• Updating the ERP system’s existing workflows, processes, and configurations to align with updated eCommerce strategies and organizational structure.
• Adapting the ERP system to sync with new tech stacks you get to support business scaling.
• Opting for new security features like multi-factor authentication, advanced encryption methods, and biometric authentication to protect against emerging threats.
• Ensuring your ERP can support different languages, currencies, and tax laws to help you expand your online B2B store into new regions or countries.

Perfective Maintenance

Perfective ERP maintenance is the process of enhancing the system’s functionality, performance, and usability even when you aren’t facing any specific issues or problems. Companies typically make these updates based on the following:

• User feedback.
• New insights from B2B eCommerce analytics.
• Evolving business needs.

Perfective ERP maintenance includes actions like:

• Improving or expanding the functionality of existing features to enhance eCommerce ERP integration.
• Updating the ERP system’s interface to make it more intuitive and easier to navigate.
• Adding new report templates to improve data visualization and overall eCommerce product data management.
• Engaging with users to identify common pain points and prioritizing those in maintenance.

How to Maintain Your ERP System Effectively in 5 steps

Here’s how you can maintain your ERP system to ensure its efficiency:

1. Outline an ERP maintenance plan

Your maintenance approach must be strategic and goal-driven to ensure the utmost data integrity and efficiency in your ERP. That requires a detailed outline of how and when the resource planning system should be updated in your organization.

Here’s what it should include: 

• Establish procedures for identifying, reporting, and fixing system errors or bugs.
• Outline steps for addressing unexpected system failures or disruptions.
• Define the roles and responsibilities of all personnel involved in maintaining the ERP system, including IT staff, system administrators, and external vendors.
• Establish a schedule and specify the frequency of routine maintenance tasks, such as data backups, updates, security checks, and performance monitoring. 
• Create a checklist your maintenance team must follow in case of ERP downtimes and outages. 
• Establish a communication plan where teams can share issues in the ERP system with the right stakeholders. 
• Include strategies for prompt response to security breaches and cyber threats, detailing containment, investigation, and recovery steps.

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2. Run functional reviews in regular intervals

As your business scales, your ERP requirements will evolve, too. That’s why you must conduct periodic functional reviews to ensure the features still align with your B2B eCommerce operations. It will show you what adjustments you must make to your ERP system to maintain its efficiency.

Set up tests for each ERP feature to gauge its efficiency. Here are some questions your review process should include: 

• How well is the ERP system performing in terms of speed and responsiveness?
• Are there any modules or processes that are consistently slower than expected?
• Have there been any performance bottlenecks or downtime incidents recently?
• Is the system handling current transaction volumes efficiently?
• Are there any issues with data accuracy or integrity in the system?
• How often are data validation errors occurring, and what is being done to address them?
• Is there any redundant or outdated data that needs to be cleaned up?
• How effective are the current data entry and validation processes?
• Are the recent software updates sufficient to handle the upcoming demand in our B2B store?
• Are the security measures aligned with our expansion plans?

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3. Familiarize yourself with vendor’s service level agreements

Go through the maintenance agreement thoroughly to understand which services are covered. This way, you will know what is included in the vendor’s ERP maintenance and support services and what might draw additional costs.

SaaS vendors usually communicate upcoming system changes to their customers. Follow these updates to understand whether they would accommodate your upcoming business needs.

Here are the elements you must highlight from the vendor’s service level agreement and updates: 

• How quickly will the vendor respond to different ERP issues? Understanding these timelines helps set realistic expectations within your organization.
• What is the expected resolution time for common ERP issues? Knowing this will help you prepare for potential downtime and manage internal resources accordingly.
• What are the steps to escalate ERP issues with the vendor? Knowing this process lets your team seek support when complaints aren’t addressed within the agreed time frame.
• What is their ERP data migration process once the contract ends? Knowing the exit strategy, including system handover processes, ensures a smooth transition to another vendor if needed.

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4. Customize security measures

All it takes is one compromised security patch and your whole ERP system can get derailed. Fixing that will be cost-intensive and time-consuming. In the meantime, your business will suffer. 

So, it’s best to implement robust security measures and check up on their integrity regularly. 

• Limit user access control and review it regularly to ensure no security breach has happened. 
• Identify the potential impact of security breaches on your operation. This will help prioritize critical security measures.
• Implement multi-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security.
• Test your security patches in a controlled environment before deploying them to your live ERP system. This helps prevent potential vulnerabilities that new patches may expose your system to.
• Encrypt sensitive ERP data both during data transfers and storage.

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5. Examine your team’s capabilities

Is your in-house IT team enough to conduct regular ERP maintenance, or would outsourcing the task be much more feasible for your company? You can’t overestimate your team’s bandwidth, as it may leave a lot of gaps in the maintenance process. On the other hand, hiring external experts for maintenance tasks, which your team could have handled easily, costs significant money. 

So, you must analyze the capabilities of your in-house experts before you make any decisions: 

• Examine the team’s understanding of the ERP system’s architecture, modules, and functionalities. 
• Conduct assessments on regulatory compliance. 
• Ask your IT team how they would address potential ERP issues. 
• Test their familiarity with your organization’s ERP maintenance plan. 

How Much Does ERP Maintenance Cost?

ERP maintenance costs vary widely depending on your company size, the growth rate of your operations, the B2B eCommerce system’s complexities, integrations, and number of users. To give you an idea, here are the key factors that influence the associated expenditure:

• Annual maintenance fees: ERP vendors usually charge annual maintenance fees, ranging from 15% to 25% of the software license cost. These fees cover access to software updates, security patches, and basic ERP maintenance and support.
• Routine customizations: The more customized your ERP system is, the more maintenance it will cost. You may have to opt for external expertise for reconfiguration with every software update, requiring additional expenses.
• Integration maintenance: While updating your ERP system, you must ensure it remains compatible with your existing tech stack, including your CRM and B2B eCommerce platforms. This often requires significant cost, especially if some tools don’t support the current ERP updates. You may have to change vendors, requiring additional investments.
• Performance tuning and testing: Regularly monitoring and optimizing system performance can be resource-intensive, especially for large-scale B2B enterprises with complex eCommerce integration.

5 Common ERP Mistakes to Avoid

Companies often make small ERP implementation mistakes that lead to big efficiency issues, rendering frequent maintenance. Here are some you must avoid: 

1. Not understanding your organization’s ERP requirements: This leads you to opt for features you won’t use and missing out on functions you actually need to maintain your B2B eCommerce store.
2. Over customization: Tailoring your ERP to suit your B2B eCommerce is important. However, many companies make the mistake of customizing way too many features, leading to more frequent and expensive maintenance activities.
3. Insufficient testing: Not being thorough with testing each ERP functionality leads to unanticipated issues in the workflow. 
4. Lack of ERP training: If your in-house team isn’t trained to identify ERP issues, many inefficiencies will go unnoticed till it becomes a severe problem.
5. Choosing an ERP vendor blindly: Businesses often make the mistake of choosing ERP systems that don’t align with their B2B eCommerce business goals. This leads to frequent adjustments and increased external support costs. 

Besides choosing an ERP system that fits your business needs, it’s also important to build an eCommerce tech stack that integrates with each other seamlessly. 

For example, in addition to offering 100% headless B2B solutions, our platform DJUST offers an eCommerce platform with complete ERP integrations, ensuring a seamless connection with existing systems. Thanks to our simple yet powerful API connector and DataHub, you can integrate your B2B eCommerce store with any ERP in two clicks.

The Bottom Line

An ERP system only continues to optimize your resource planning when you polish it regularly with proper maintenance activities. Here’s a rundown on what it entails: 

• Map out a detailed maintenance plan with backup schedules, disaster response regulations, and stakeholders. 
• Conduct feature reviews and tests.
• Understand your team’s capabilities to handle the maintenance activities.
• Tailor security measures according to your organization’s complexity.
• Avoid over-customization of ERP systems.
• Choose an ERP platform and eCommerce tools that integrate with your current tech ecosystem seamlessly.

With a planned schedule, a thorough plan, and a skilled team, ERP maintenance will easily become a norm in your organization. Your data won’t go stale and the integrity of your eCommerce platform will be intact, offering a satisfying B2B experience to your clients.