Employee motivation, engagement and productivity all hinge on the quality of your company’s leaders. When management has clear direction, and they’re empowered to make great decisions, they’re likely to head teams that set and accomplish goals.

One of the best ways to help managers develop into leaders is by providing them with an ERP solution. There are many available to meet their unique needs, but all of these systems have one thing in common: They give managers a substantial amount of data, which allows them to build trust and improve the quality of conversations they have with their teams. Let’s discuss this in more detail:

1. How ERPs build trust
Managers are technically leaders, but their ability to lead often hinges on the type of resources their company provides them with to help staff members succeed at their jobs. For example, managers who can retrieve scores of information from their company’s databases can make more informative, better decisions. In turn, this builds trust because employees understand how decisions are being made.

Further, trust in senior management becomes increasingly important for employees who are thinking about staying or leaving a company. In Tower Watson’s 2014 Global Workforce Study, trust cracks the top five “attractions” for employees of all ages, and it becomes increasingly important as workers near retirement.

2. How ERPs improve communication
How often do your managers meet with their employees one-on-one or as a group to strategize, suggest improvements and discuss team performance? Managers who communicate regularly are more likely to have highly engaged employees, noted Jim Harter and Amy Adkins of Gallup.

In a study of over 7,700 U.S. adults, Gallup found that communication was linked to employee engagement. Researchers also found that employee engagement was highest when managers met with staff members individually.

So, what does this have to do with an ERP solution? Everything.

ERP solutions give all employees a unique, birds-eye view into the organization, allowing them greater access into how and why the company is performing in a specific way. This type of access improves communication for a few reasons:

Enhanced conversation: Managers will no longer have to present surface level material at meetings. Because they have greater access to a wealth of new data, they can approach situations and problems from new angles, form new strategies and engage their employees like never before. And this is a big deal to employees!

A study conducted by Igloo Software of 1,000 office workers found that nearly 50 percent of employees believe meetings are unproductive. ERP solutions can enhance the quality of meetings by providing detailed and accurate data for discussion making meetings more productive, informative and exciting.

Better streamlined processes: Have you ever attended meetings and been presented with the same information on more than one occasion? Seventy six percent of employees, according to the same Igloo Software survey, dislike meetings they feel aren’t necessary, 59 percent detest ones that fail to stay on topic and 58 percent feel their biggest pet peeve is when people repeat what another employee said. These statistics coincide perfectly with our previous point that many employees feel meetings are unproductive.

An ERP solution breaks down the traditional barriers that prevent managers from creating distinctive meetings because it provides them more access to better and fresh company-wide data. This ensures they can access fresh data and create different presentations for each meeting, thus making it more likely their employees are engaged.

3. Simply more data: Managers who are equipped with more data likely have a much better chance of making their business cases than those who have little proof to back up suggestions and claims. Because ERPs provide leaders with more, higher-quality information, they can make more engaging presentations, which in turn increases the quality of their meetings and employees’ engagement.

If you’d like to help your managers develop into better leaders, the first thing you should consider is providing them with more advanced technology such as an ERP solution.