8 Signs Your Company Needs an ERP Solution
Business growth is undeniably embedded in all your company’s goals. As your company expands however, you’ll need to leverage more resources to support your growth. These resources will include reliable, passionate people as well as powerful, efficient systems to keep your business scaling effectively in size and profitability. Many of the software purchasing and integration decisions you make as your business scales will be simple and benefit your company in many ways as you continue to grow.
However, if your company has reached a point where you are considering how an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system could streamline your business, your decision making is about to become much more complex. This complexity is due largely to timing. Integrating an ERP solution too soon in your business can easily lead to increased confusion and decreased productivity. However, if you wait too long after your need for an ERP system arises, you could already be losing profits through missed opportunities.
What is ERP?
The best way to define ERP is as an integrated collection of business applications that interconnect to drive business growth through streamlined data management across all aspects of a business, including:
- Finances
- Human Resources
- Relationship Management
- Manufacturing
- Supply Chain Management
Do I Need an ERP Solution?
Here are eight signs that the time is right for your company to benefit from an ERP solution.
1. There are significant gaps in business communication due to data insufficiencies
Excellent communication with your internal teams as well as your external partners, customers, or clients is vital to good business health. However, during times of growth, it may become very evident that gaps exist in your organization through missed deadlines or poor follow up.
An ERP solution helps you easily store, track, and manage all of your important business data and provides seamless and secure sharing options to make sure all of your company’s communications are packed with accurate and ample data.
2. Business opportunities lag or dwindle due to improper documentation or errors
Many business opportunities within your company may be lost due to misplaced documents or errors that occur within your existing data management processes.
ERP systems give your company the tools you need to more effectively manage large amounts of data, and ensure that you are not losing profits due to lost or forgotten business opportunities.
3. Accounting is becoming much too complex to effectively manage each month using your current systems
To maintain solid profit margins, your company must have strong accounting systems and procedures in place. Accounting activities are important to make sure that your business stays profitable, but they can also demand large amounts of resources and time that can quickly increase your overhead costs.
If your accounting processes are becoming increasingly complex each month, then an ERP solution can help you reduce your costs and provide you with comprehensive accounting modules. Within an ERP, you can also automate common, recurring transactions to save your company time and money.
4. Employee productivity is being diminished due to manual processes
As your company grows, you’ll likely invest in new systems and software while you develop more in-depth procedures to keep your business on track. However, it is very easy to get bogged down with manual processes or lose productivity by relying on multiple, separate systems for all your business tasks.
An ERP system can help eliminate much of your manual work, and integrate all your business organization and operational needs into one powerful, comprehensive system.
5. Security concerns exist in your current data transmission and sharing procedures
If your company deals with large amounts of sensitive data, then storing and sharing such private information can present compliance challenges within your business.
Most ERP systems adhere to strict SLAs and help you maintain compliance with any regulations that exist concerning data sharing and transmission in your industry.
6. You need a way to manage large amounts of data, across every department and aspect of your business
If the success of your company relies on large amounts of data shared across many departments, then organization and tracking all this information while making it accessible to the people who need it for their jobs can be a significant challenge.
ERP systems are capable of managing, organizing, and integrating large amounts of data. Most solutions also offer role-based securities that only allow employees access to the data they need to do their job effectively. This level of security helps protect the integrity of your company data, while giving people within your organization the proper tools and information to do their jobs successfully.
7. You’ve created an extensive wish list of capabilities and features you want to access from a singular system
Planning for an ERP solution is an important step to choosing the best system for your business needs and budget. You are only ready to integrate an ERP solution once you’ve considered exactly what business needs must be met and have an exhaustive list of the capabilities, features, and tools you need from the system.
8. Members of Senior Management are all in agreement that the business will benefit from an ERP system
Implementing an ERP solution into your company is a complex endeavor. It is important that all of the decision makers and influencers within your business recognize the benefits an ERP solution will provide and agree that key business needs will be met through integration.
If you are seeing the majority of these signals coming from within your business, then now is a great time to begin considering the ERP solutions available. Selecting the perfect ERP system for your business can be a complex task, so we’ve broken the process into easy-to-implement steps in our free guide, How to Select the Right ERP in 7 Steps.
