Why generic ERP software fails the coal industry — and what to do about it

Many coal businesses have tried general-purpose ERP or accounting software and gone back to Excel and registers for the actual day's work. The software is fine for manufacturing or retail. It just doesn't understand coal.

Coal is not a standard commodity. What a load is worth depends on its GCV, ash, moisture and volatile matter. A generic ERP tracks quantity and price, and ignores the parameters that decide what the coal is actually worth.

Think of how a load really moves. You buy at a known GCV — from a PSU auction against a SODO, or from a supplier. It travels by truck to your yard, where it is weighed and its quality tested. Then it is sold and dispatched, with a dispatch slip, e-way bill details and a GST invoice.

A generic ERP handles none of this natively. It doesn't know what a SODO or a lifting balance is, can't hold GCV and a lab result against a receipt, and doesn't keep stock by yard and quality.

The result is predictable. The ERP is kept for accounting, while the real operations carry on in Excel sheets, WhatsApp groups and registers — and the software becomes an expensive data-entry exercise.

The answer is not to customise a generic ERP until it sort of works. It is software that starts from the coal trade and fits the way your people already work.

When you evaluate software for your coal business, ask: Does it record GCV and quality on every receipt? Does it keep stock yard by yard? Does it track SODO, lifting balance and validity? Can the weights from the kanta slip be entered once and used for both dispatch and invoice? Can your accounts person raise the invoice from the dispatch without typing it again? Then ask to see each of these live, on sample data — not on slides.