An ERP in Your Future?

Posted by Breezotoo
April 11, 2008

An analysis of your business reveals your company has the standard accounting package that similar industries use. You have several pieces of independent software that tie in inventory and manage your procurement process. Excel spreadsheets are e-mailed around the office and even sent to vendors and customers. As an added bonus you recently implemented a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, which should really advance sales and grow the company.

Invoices are created from the spreadsheets then entered into the accounting package. Orders are routed to accounts who call on the vendors and place orders, often being repeated because the goods dont arrive as soon as anticipated.
Customer information is kept in the accounting package and in the shared CRM tool. It is never checked for accuracy.

The books are closed off in the middle of each month and an inventory check is completed every six months.

No one has a clue as to the standing of the business, right at this moment. Not your brightest accountant on staff, business coach, your mother or even your CPA. You have no clue.

Somehow you have managed to pay your accounts and salaries and stay in business.

Your staff hates the business. It is a nightmare keeping track of any of this. They wake up at night and realize they sent the wrong spreadsheet to a vendor and shared a competing vendors information! They wait for major fallout each week.

If it aint busted why fix it? You’re thinking?

Right.

By the time you realize its not working you’ll be sitting waiting for an unemployment check.

Business today needs to work smarter not harder. One of the ways of doing this is to consolidate all your business information into one system. Imagine if you had a single piece of information that could move from department to department. Even if that means one PC to the next? No place to lose information. All inventory items in one place. All vendor and customer records in one centralized place. Even your staff information securely on a system.

Your website, yeah, you do have one of those? Well this information can be routed directly to your website and managed in real time.

Right you’re thinking, I could never afford that!

Wrong! Today there are systems called ERP which is short for Enterprise Resource Programs or even Enterprise Resource Planning tools that combine all this information in one database. The even better news is that you dont even have to buy the system and have a bunch of IT geeks manage it all for you. You can rent it!

Software as a Service, or SaaS, is the new name. These programs sit online in secure servers managed by people who really know what they are doing. Plus its backed up and all maintained. So when the next hurricane or earthquake wipes out everything, your system isn’t affected, not even for a second. Everything else maybe lost!

Businesses large and small are making the transition to ERP systems the new wave makes it affordable for more businesses. The really big businesses on this planet started the move to ERP systems in the late 1980s early 1990s. They spent as if the Cold War was still on, realizing that the better systems allowed them to be more profitable and have better knowledge and control of their business. These costs are still being incurred today.
For smaller businesses there are systems selling at really affordable prices. There is no need to be stuck with standalone systems. The world is connected. Isnt it about time your business was too?

Graeme Nichol Arcturus Advisors (http://www.arcturusadvisors.com)works with business leaders to close the gap between great strategies and mediocre results. (Newsletter arcturusadvisor@aweber.com)

Information Technology

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