It's taking longer and longer to reconcile financials at the end
of the day, month or year. The sales forecasts
made are based more on guesswork than solid figures. Your business is having
trouble, keeping up with its order volume and hence customer satisfaction is faltering.
There is no idea on how much inventory
is there in the warehouse and is a pain to find out. If this sounds like to be
happening in your business or close to it, then it is time to go for ERP
Let us go slightly into the five major symptoms which can lead
to disaster without ERP implementation.
Lots of Different Software for Different
Processes
When various front- and back-end systems run separately, it can
wreak havoc on the processes that are meant to ensure your company is running
smoothly. Without accurate data from sales, inventory management may suffer,
while not having the latest information from accounting can trigger a ripple
effect on everything from marketing budgets to payroll.
ERP software integrates these systems so that every business
function relies on a single database. With one source of information that
contains accurate, real-time data, an ERP solution breaks up information
logjams, helps staff make better decisions more quickly and frees up their time
to work on more high-value exercises like helping the business grow even
faster.
Don't Have Easy Access to Information About
Your Business
The pace of business is faster than ever before, which means
employees across your company need immediate access to key data. With an ERP
solution, executives can get a holistic view of business operations at any
time, while other staff can get the information they need to do their jobs more
effectively. For example, sales representatives should be able to view a
customer's full transaction history and more proactively improve renewal rates
while increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Accounting Takes Longer and Is More Difficult
Often, the first noticeable signs that your company needs ERP
software will come from your accounting department. If
your employees rely on paper-based invoices and sales orders and spend hours
every week manually entering them into different accounting and sales
systems, you need to consider how much time is being wasted on tasks that ERP
software can handle in an instant.
The same goes for financial reporting. If it takes ages to
consolidate or reconcile financial information across systems and through
countless spreadsheets, an ERP solution can make a significant impact. With all
financials in a single database, accounting staff won't have to spend hours
cross-posting information, rekeying numbers, or reconciling data manually. Your
accounting staff will be more productive, freeing them to deliver critical
reports without delays and frustration. Comrade and other ERP based software
cure these critical problems to a great level.
Sales and the Customer Experience Are
Suffering
As companies grow, one of their biggest challenges is often inventory
management. Ensuring that the right amount of products is in the right location
at the right time is a vital part of business operations.
When sales, inventory and customer
data are maintained separately, it can create serious problems across your
company. If you run out of a popular product, sales will be off until the next
shipment arrives. Meanwhile, if a customer calls to inquire about an order and
employees can't track it to see if it's been shipped or if it's even in stock your
company will start to develop a poor reputation for reliability and service.
With an ERP system, on the other hand, staff in every department
will have access to the same, up-to-the-minute information. Customer-facing
reps should be able to answer customers questions about order and shipping
status, payment status, service issues, etc., without having to hang up the
phone and check with another department. Better yet, customers should be able
to simply go online to their account and view status
information. Meanwhile, the warehouse manager can see that stock is getting low
and can reorder.
IT Is Too Complex and Time-Consuming
One of the biggest downsides of having multiple systems across your
business is that IT management can become a nightmare. Customizing these
systems, integrating them and maintaining them with patches and upgrades can be
complex, costly and sap critical time and resources.
If your patchwork of systems includes on-premise, legacy
business software, system upgrades can be more trouble than they're worth. Not
only are these updates expensive and time-consuming, but they may also undo
customizations implemented by IT staff. Given that, it's no surprise that
two-thirds of mid-size businesses are running outdated versions of their
business software.
Rather than adding more software and complexity to an already
ineffective system, ERP technology can give you the agility to respond to
changing business needs rapidly. That's why selecting a cloud-based ERP
provider like NetSuite is critical. With NetSuite, system updates are no longer
an issue, and new functions are easy to add as your business grows and changes.
