Businesses know that they must always be growing and improving to stay in – and preferably at the top of – the game. With the current state of the economy, however, businesses are also aware that they need to get the most bang for their buck; any investments, technology or otherwise, must deliver value.
The current business trend in terms of technology is enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As we’ve discussed many, many times on this blog, ERP systems are, while well worth the effort for most businesses, costly and time-consuming. When considering your business, therefore, there are a few steps that you should take to determine whether or not an ERP system is right for you.
Companies usually choose to undergo an ERP implementation for one – or all – of three reasons:
To integrate financial data
An ERP system combines all the financial figures from all the departments of your business, removing any possible questions/disagreements as to which department is doing what.
To standardize processes
Standardizing processes and using a single database saves time and increases productivity.
To standardize HR information
Businesses with multiple units may not have a unified human resources system to track employees and/or to communicate with them. An ERP system can create and streamline a unified process.
So how do you know if YOU need an ERP system? Here are some scenarios that might show you:
Each of your processes uses different software
Think about how your employees record, track, and process information. Does the accounting department use a system for accounts receivable/accounts payable while sales uses a different system to enter and track customer orders? Does your warehouse have another system to track shipping and receiving?
Statistics about your business are not easily accessible
How quickly could you find the information you needed if someone asked you how many orders you receive per day? What if you needed to know what your average sales margin is? If each of your processes uses different software and is using spreadsheets to manually track data, it might take you awhile.
Your accounting tasks seem interminable
Do the employees in your financial department depend upon paper bases invoices and sales orders? Do they manually enter data into one or more systems? Do they have to combine and reconcile the different figures that come to them from each department?
Your customer service is suffering
Inventory management will become more complex as you expand your business. Is your sales, inventory, and customer information maintained in different software systems? Do you know for sure that the right amount of product will be in the right place at the right time? Do your customer service employees have a hard time helping customers because they don’t have easy access to the information they need?
Your Information Technology team is stressed out
Do your information technology employees spend most of their day troubleshooting, patching, updating, and/or upgrading one or another of your various software systems? Do you need a whole host of people because it’s nearly impossible for one or two people to be experts in all the software systems you use? Do users need constant training?
If you answered yes to these questions, an ERP system is probably right for your business. Come back for another blog post where we’ll show you how an ERP system can fix these issues, or contact Oates & Company right away to start learning more about which ERP system is best for your business.
