MetaMorph Learning, a start-up that focuses on social entrepreneurship and offers skill training competencies for entry-level retail jobs, has recently deployed Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP solution. Sukhi. Iyer, founder and CEO of MetaMorph,  in an interview to V.Sudhakshina of CIOL, shares her views on hosted ERP model.

What made you go for an ERP solution?
 
Our foundation philosophy towards business is, wherever possible, think ahead and take technology decisions today thinking of what the world might be five years down the line.  Going strong on that we didn't want to make any heavy investments in one particular technology, which we might outgrow at some point of time.

For the learning management as a business platform, we just needed a back-end application, which would initially take care of our basic business process such as invoicing.  Then, along with our growth, it would also possibly support the other back-end administration, which we might need later. That's why we went in for a Hosted ERP solution from Microsoft with a single user license.

Didn't you think about the other options available?

I was very clear in my mind that I wanted a SaaS type of solution. The solution addressed more than what we were looking for and the price point were very attractive. We didn't want to invest our limited resources on back-end applications and wanted to focus more on our business. The hosted solution allowed me to do exactly the same.

How convenient is the hosted model in comparison to traditional ERP models?

There are a million ways where a hosted ERP model is more beneficial for small enterprises than a traditional model. The first thing I would say is the disadvantage in the traditional model in buying of licenses. The second thing is about having that kind of skills you require in-house, to manage. Then you have to invest in people who are running it for you, not only you have to manage the application, but also the servers, infrastructure etc.

Weren't there any concerns before going for this technology?

I am very open to this kind of technology and have no barriers towards it and was very well aware about the security issues. There was no fear in our mind as to what would happen to our data, etc.

From a technology perspective we are very clear about security and fire-walling our data. As long as you understand the kind of security the technology offers I think one can surely levitate the concern.

What are the business benefits that by the adoption?

As a start-up, to a very new company, the application enables to build the process needed for business and as well as automate the process which you already have. The processes are already in-built into the application, and we don't have to go through learning them. And, of-course, from the cost perspective, the rental service and the scalable model make hosted platform a very affordable option.

The deployment just took 3-4 days, though we required some sort of initial training as the applications were not completely intuitive and user-friendly. But that also was not a major problem as ABB (System Integrator) was just a call away.