How smart ERR design supercharges your business by coordinating teams and automating workflows

Spreadsheets hold companies together. Until they don’t.

Eventually, the cracks between tools, teams, and data grow too wide to ignore. Numbers stop lining up. Decisions start relying more on instinct instead of real time insights. 

Managing such a fragmented workflow isn’t sustainable. It’s a baited trap for business performance.

That’s when the enterprise resource planning systems, also known as ERPs, come in full force. Yet, ERP design is more than a software project. It’s how growing organizations regain control of their information and translate it into clear, coordinated action.

At Lazarev.agency, an AI design agency, we approach ERP design as a strategy for how organizations think and evolve. In this article, we’ll unpack what makes a strong ERP system, where most fail, and how to design one that grows smarter with every user interaction.

Key takeaways 

• Treat ERP design as infrastructure. It defines how information moves, how teams decide, and how fast business scales.
• AI makes ERP proactive. With predictive dashboards and adaptive UX, systems evolve alongside the people who use them.
• Lazarev.agency’s collaboration with SolarDrive proved the model. A unified ERP workflow doubled daily client capacity and cut over 2 hours of manual work per employee.

Why most ERP systems struggle and how design prevents it

ERP design shapes how information moves through an organization: who sees what, when, and why. It’s the connective tissue that keeps departments aligned.

Yet, most enterprise systems are assembled over years, sometimes decades. While each module solves a local problem, it also introduces some kind of perpetual friction, be it confusing hierarchies or redundant inputs.

And time and again, what starts as a tool for efficiency becomes another layer of work. That’s where smart ERP design emerges as the only way out.

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“Every ERP project begins with a deceptively simple question: how do we make the right actions obvious?” shares Anna Demianenko, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency. “The best systems don’t tell people what to do. They make the right move feel inevitable. In enterprise software, usability equals decision velocity. The faster new users find what matters, the faster the business moves.”

ERP software design process: a practical framework for enterprise teams

The success of any ERP software system comes down to one thing: alignment. Between people. Between data. And ultimately, between decisions.

Getting there is a matter of balance. You have to keep the process structured enough to stay on track, but flexible enough to reflect how your business actually runs.

Developing a usable ERP design is a multifaceted process. That’s why turning to expert enterprise web design companies is a move many business owners make to optimize the process.

At Lazarev.agency, we’ve built a research-backed framework that helps enterprise teams create that balance. It connects AI UX strategy to execution, and logic to experience.

Here’s how you can use the same approach to make your ERP work for you.

1. Diagnose the enterprise

Start by understanding where your processes slow down and why.  Every design decision stems from data gathered here.

Practical steps:

• Stakeholder mapping: List every role that touches your existing system. Run a quick RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) check to clarify who truly owns what. You’ll be surprised how many “owners” vanish once you do.
• Workflow audit: Visualize how a single task, e.g., approving an invoice or shipping an order, moves across departments. Tools like Miro and Lucidchart make this easier.
• User interviews: Observe real tasks. Don’t rely solely on what people say. Instead, watch how they actually navigate systems.
• Market scan: Study modern ERP solutions like Oracle ERP cloud or NetSuite to understand emerging UX standards.

Here, the focal goal is to expose operational friction points. When done well, this stage alone will reveal 80% of the design priorities.

2. Visualize the system

Once you understand workflows, translate them into system logic. Create a service blueprint. Think of it as a diagram that maps frontstage (user actions) and backstage (system-level business processes). 

This helps identify dependencies, redundancies, and opportunities for automating repetitive tasks.

Tools to use:

• Whimsical for ecosystem mapping.
• Notion or Confluence for cross-team documentation.
• FigJam and other Figma Components for creating early interface models connected to workflows.

Include the full lifecycle: data entry → process → review → output → reporting. This visualization becomes your single source of truth for design, development, and testing teams.

3. Build modular architecture

Treat each ERP component (inventory management, human resources, logistics, or customer relationship management (CRM) system) as a module with its own logic but shared patterns.

Implementation tips:

• Name flows with intent (e.g., “Finance > Reports > Create Invoice”) to avoid overlap and make cross-team collaboration painless.
• Use DesignOps principles or other relevant software product development methodology to maintain consistent design libraries and documentation.
• Involve technical leads early to align data structures with design hierarchy.

Such a modular mindset prevents undue workflow fragmentation. When a new feature is added, it automatically fits the system’s rhythm.

4. Prototype with context

Skip the lorem ipsum. Use real data and realistic scenarios in every prototype. For example, when testing an “Order Approval” flow, input actual numbers and timestamps from previous reports.

Practical methods:

• Use Axure or ProtoPie for interactive flows and UX prototypes.
• Set up scenario testing sessions: give users time-limited tasks (“Find overdue projects and approve the top three”).
• Gather quantitative feedback (task success rate, time-on-task, and user satisfaction score) alongside qualitative insights.

It’s at this stage that UX becomes tangible. If your end user pauses, hesitates, or switches to Excel, the design isn’t doing its job yet.

5. Validate and evolve

An ERP never truly launches. It matures. Once live, your product becomes a feedback machine.

Sustain continuous improvement through:

• Usage analytics: Track which modules get the most interaction and where drop-offs occur (using tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude).
• Surveys and contextual feedback: Place quick in-app prompts asking, “Did this page help you finish your task?”
• Design reviews quarterly: Revisit the system’s architecture and check if new workflows still follow the initial logic.

Pair this with market research updates twice a year. Keep in mind that ERP usability expectations evolve fast, especially with AI transformation trends.

How AI expands the role of ERP design

AI is the new substrate of enterprise UX. It gives designers leverage to create products that adapt instead of aging. 

As an AI product design agency with an AI UX mindset, our Lazarev.agency’s team knows this firsthand: the smarter the system gets, the more valuable the design becomes. It’s a rare loop where intelligence fuels usability, and the product keeps getting better simply by being used.

“The biggest mindset shift in ERP design is realizing that AI doesn’t simplify the system”, says Artem Shcherbak, UX/UI Designer at Lazarev.agency. “It raises awareness of that system. Our job as designers is to give that awareness form and rhythm so humans can trust it.”

1. Use AI to spot workflow friction

Every click tells a story. By analyzing where your target audience hesitates or drops off, you can pinpoint where the experience breaks.

• Start by embedding analytics into the ERP prototype itself. Tools like FullStory or Hotjar expose where users pause or repeat steps.
• Layer that data with clustering algorithms from Power BI or another tool of your choice to visualize recurring inefficiencies across different departments.

✅ Design tip: Build what we call a “UX telemetry dashboard”. Review it monthly with operations teams the same way finance reviews revenue.

2. Automate repetitive input

Audit every recurring manual task across modules. If it repeats, it’s a sure candidate for automation.

• Use Document AI or Azure AI Document Intelligence to extract data.
• Implement Elastic Search to autofill fields contextually with dynamic LLM-generated suggestions.

✅ Design tip: Map every manual action in your ERP flows. If an action repeats more than twice a week, flag it for potential automation.

3. Personalize interfaces 

A finance manager and a field technician don’t need the same dashboard. AI allows ERPs to surface exactly what each role needs, when they need it.

Use Amplitude Recommend or TensorFlow.js to tailor dashboards per user behavior and access level.

✅ Design tip: Keep one user centric design system but separate logic layers. Let AI determine which widgets appear and in what order.

4. Shift from reporting to forecasting

Predictive dashboards turn ERP data into foresight.

• Use DataRobot for forecasting trends.
• Embed visualizations with Tableau APIs.
• Replace static charts with motion cues showing progression or deviation.

✅ Design tip: Design predictive elements to enhance calm confidence. Good forecasting design feels like foresight.

5. Keep the system learning

Every interaction can improve the model if you capture it.

1. Capture micro-interactions (accept/reject AI suggestion).
2. Store labeled events in a unified data lake (Snowflake, BigQuery).
3. Retrain lightweight models monthly for precision.

✅ Design tip: Add a transparent feedback pattern. A small “Learning from your input” badge builds trust and sets the right expectation that the system evolves.

ERP design in action: how Lazarev.agency helped SolarDrive scale

Treat the principles above as constants of modern design. But these alone don’t capture the texture of the work. To design a new ERP system effectively, we need to see it in motion.

That’s where practice speaks louder than theory.

Lazarev.agency’s collaboration with SolarDrive is an illustrious example of what happens when disciplined design gets strategically embraced.

Challenge

SolarDrive is a solar-panel provider with installations across the US. Before the redesign, their internal process spanned five disconnected platforms. Sales, permitting, documentation, and installation each lived in isolation. Every project passed through multiple tools, and information routinely got lost along the way.

Lazarev.agency was brought in to design a single integrated system.

Discovery

The first step was to chart the entire lifecycle of a SolarDrive project. Starting with the first customer inquiry and all the way up to the final installation section, we identified 47 unique touchpoints across business departments.

Workshops revealed recurring pain points. These referred chiefly to scattered communication, duplicated effort, and no single source of project truth.

The design challenge was to connect all of that without overwhelming users who were already juggling field operations.

Our design strategy

1. Unified core operations: All key workflows were merged into a structured interface with a built-in project management system.
2. Simulated onboarding: Rapid hiring cycles meant constant training. We created an interactive onboarding section where new employees could practice with test projects that mirrored real operations.
3. Intelligent task allocation: A custom scheduling algorithm prioritized assignments based on project urgency, workers’ location, and clients’ availability. That logic translated directly into user interface filters and notifications.
4. Centralized communication: The old system relied on a mix of emails, SMS, and external chats. We replaced it with an “Inbox” tied to each task and client record.
5. Transparent progress tracking: A consolidated project view allowed anyone to trace a job’s status across departments. Bottlenecks became visible immediately instead of surfacing at the end of the week.

Impact

The new system changed SolarDrive’s daily rhythm. Repetitive work was automated, and onboarding became faster. Here’s the impact in numbers:

• 2× increase in clients served daily
• 2.4 hours saved per employee each day
• Zero information loss between departments

Beyond numbers, the ERP design redefined how teams collaborated. Each role gained visibility into the whole operation. Decision-making moved from reactive to synchronized.

Build the brain for your business needs

When every department, data stream, and decision flow moves in perfect sync, your ERP becomes less of a tool and more of a nerve center.

That’s the work we do at Lazarev.agency. As an AI-driven design agency, our team designs enterprise ecosystems to make data feel alive and complex workflows feel almost suspiciously easy.

Get in touch to discuss your ERP design project if you’re ready to trade chaos for coherence. Together, we’ll build a system that thinks with your business.