When your business is starting out, it is likely that you pull data from a variety of sources. You may have several separate systems for your fundamental business processes and when you complete cross-functional tasks like financial reporting, you manually pull information from each of these sources and integrate it. Does this sound like you?
While this is feasible in a very small business, as businesses face unprecedented growth, a process improvement is needed, and that improvement probably involves an ERP system.
An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a software system that allows you to automate vital, central business processes to plan and manage the use of all resources your business has at its disposal.
Why should you consider implementing an ERP system?
Size is making manual integration too difficult
When businesses grow, so does the size of their database. While going through ten or even a hundred lines of data to compile financial reports may have been feasible, when your data grows to thousands of entries across multiple databases, small business accounting software simply will not suffice anymore. An ERP will allow you to sift through the data in an automated manner, allowing you to focus on running your business instead of manually compiling reports.
Organizational structure is becoming too complex
Organizational complexity grows with the size of a business. Different functions that used to be handled by individuals become spread amongst multiple individuals, and those individuals eventually evolve into their own departments with their own organizational structures and databases. As the number of moving parts in an organization grows, the interaction of their processes change – one person integrating data in a timely and organized way eventually becomes impossible. With an ERP, you will be able to visualize all the information in a central location allowing you to compile reports and process other business functions without needing to manually access every department’s data.
Too many softwares are making your business efficient
You are probably discovering that you have a different application for each individual function: one for accounting, one for CRM, one for SRM, and you need to use all of them simultaneously to make your business run effectively. Time and effort is being lost as you switch from one software to another, constantly trying to sort out compatibility and formatting issues. An ERP system takes all the different softwares for different parts of your businesses and combines them into one solution, with a central dashboard for access. This eliminates the struggles of switching between different softwares and makes your business more efficient.
Are You Ready to Consider an ERP?
Does an ERP sound like something your business needs? ERP is vital to the successful, sustainable growth of a business, and Propel Solutions is available to help you choose an integrate a system every step in the way. Our talented and experienced process mapping professionals will help you determine the needs of your business and choose an ERP, and our implementation-focused outlook will help you train your users to ensure that the transition to ERP is seamless. We have experience with integrating solutions across all departments of large, growing organizations.
If your organization could benefit from a transition to ERP with Propel Solutions, contact us at [email protected], or fill out the contact form below.