The benefits of moving to the cloud are well-known to manufacturing firms:

On-demand real-time access – The days of manually retrieving relevant information about a customer or inquiry are over – firms can now access the information from any Internet connection. On-demand real-time access to important resources means that every department in the supply chain can react instantly to the changing needs of the business. Manufacturing firms can fill orders faster, quickly respond to changing customer habits and manage inventory more efficiently.

Big data - The cloud lets firms store, manage and access large amounts of important data. Cloud ERP for manufacturing gives firms the ability to access big data, including plans, simulations, documents and other manufacturing resources from the cloud.

Reduced Costs - Cloud-based manufacturing solutions have been found to reduce infrastructure, maintenance and lifecycle costs by as much 54% according to industry analysts. Cloud solutions save both money and time by increasing real-time collaboration and reducing the time it takes to bring products to market.

Scalability - Cloud ERP solutions deliver only as much storage and power as needed, allowing manufacturing companies of all sizes to determine when they need more or less power based on changing project workloads.

All of these benefits lead to greater efficiency and productivity across the entire supply chain, which ultimately leads to increased profits. A recent study by Gartner predicted that industry adoption of cloud-based manufacturing and distribution software will increase from 22% in 2013 to 45% by 2023. The same study found that a total of 47% of organizations surveyed plan to move their core ERP systems to the cloud within five years.