Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an efficient tool for managing information. It helps to collaborate with all departments, manage resources, reduce cost & wastage, take quick decision, better customer support and foster growth.
A Modern ERP implementation can automate your business and manage growth of all sized organization from start-up to global enterprise. .
For instance, a global giant like LG Electronics has 114 subsidiaries, and more than 82,000 employees across 40 countries. They have centralized their HR management and increased productivity by implementing the automated ERP solution.
Entrepreneurs often suffer from a crippling fear of financial failure. Most of the time their main objective is to get the maximum revenue with minimal investment. As a result, they find it’s expensive to automate their business with ERP.
A myth goes around- ERP is only for Big Enterprises!
But do you know a recent survey of the Aberdeen Group stated: Small businesses experienced a 36% reduction in the time it takes to make decisions because of ERP software.
To ease your tension, in this article we will show every edge of ERP solution for your business.
Problems of Manual Management
The biggest downfall to control your business manually is the hurdles of connecting all departments for a smooth workflow.
An organization consists of various departments and these departments need to continuously share information and collaborate with each other in order to run a project successfully.
However, this task is too difficult to handle manually. There is a high chance of customers dissatisfaction, resource wastage, data redundancy, and unnecessary workload.
Manual Management is responsible for-
- Inconvenient communication
- Inventory wastage
- Inaccurate scheduling
- Delayed deliveries
- Losing orders
- Non-compliant operations
- Spending hours in validating reports
- Unsatisfied customers
Therefore, you can eliminate excessive workload and inessential monotonous activities by automating your business with ERP Solution.
ERP Solution to Centralize Your Business
ERP centralizes all the information about your business and makes you able to streamline the flow of information. All of your business processes become connected end to end.
Also, It integrates all the function of different departments such as inventory, accounting, human resources, customer relationship management (CRM) into one system to share all the data across the entire organization.
Why Small-Medium Businesses Need ERP Solution
Integrate your business data and process across multiple departments and locations with one system.
ERP can help your organization to increase productivity, quick process of the orders, meet customers expectation, minimize the resource and data management cost and maximize your profit.
Moreover, it is easy to implement in your business, train-up the user and maintain the overall process from one easy interface.
As a result, it holds the same benefit for all sized business. Small-medium businesses also can get the best pay-off of their investment from ERP.
Centralize Data Management System
A typical organization has many departments and these departments continuously communicate and exchange data with each other. The success of a company lies in effective and smooth communication with these departments as well as an associated third party like vendors, customers, and outsourcers.
In a smart ERP solution, all the information is maintained at a central location and is shared with different departments.
With every move of your company, the central database will be updated automatically and keep track of all transaction.
Therefore you can get a bird’s eye view regarding your company’s activities from anywhere and anytime from your ERP solution.
Improved Productivity of Your Team
Suppose, a customer sends a request to sale department, then the sales department will collaborate with other departments of inventory, production, HR, finance etc through the centralize ERP database and complete the order in an organized way.
There is no chance of inventory wastage. Moreover, you can ensure a proper production schedule and on-time delivery by distributing data across all the departments.
In this way, you can increase business revenue and customer delight.
Real-time Visibility
You can measure your business productivity with real-time analytics reports of inventory, customer insight, human resources, financial statements and supply chain capabilities.
It helps you to make better decisions, future strategies and cut the best revenue.
Moreover, it gives you a high return of investment by giving you the access and monitoring power of all information across the organization.
Therefore you can easily respond to any complex data request more effectively and process the data in an organized way.
Improved Customer Relations
With integrated customer relationship management, you have all your customers data at your fingertip. So you can easily interact with your customers, manage their requests, improve customer relationship and make new revenue opportunities.
It allows you to process customer’s orders and completer them in a disciplined way. You can minimize your response time as well as delivery time with the successful integration of CRM.
Moreover, you can monitor your customer behavior and other insights from a single screen. It will nurture your relationship with your customers and increase satisfaction.
Therefore you will get more loyal clients for your business. Also, you can formulate concrete strategies for new lead generation.
Eliminate Redundancy
Modern ERP ensures data accuracy and no duplication with the ability of real-time update. All the actions of your business automatically update to your system instantly. Therefore, it minimizes the risk of data inconsistency and unnecessary repetitions.
As we mentioned before, it allows you to open communication and share information through a centralized database.
Through a single system, you can store, process, share, monitor, and access data frequently. So, there is no chance for data re-entry or overlapping.
In addition, modern ERP systems have a smart security solution through firewalls and built-in protection resources to protect your data accordingly.
Challenges of ERP Solution
Whether the size of your company small, medium or large, ERP solution can hold huge benefits for your business. In spite of these facilities, you should account some requisition, scope, and effects before ERP implementation in your business.
Here, we enlist some challenges that any SME owners can face to start ERP implementations at their company.
Complex Implementation
ERP is a very standard system. Phase by phase implementation makes it more complex. The technical team, user and management should come simultaneously to make the ERP implementation successful.
The business process may change; the user needs training or the budget may need some adjustment. All these events can make the ERP Complex for implementation.
Inbuilt Old Concept- Small Business Do not Need ERP!
A few years back, a large enterprise is a key organization that uses ERP. It was very costly then. However, in today’s, there are still small companies who hold the mentality that Small Companies do not need ERP.
Therefore, SME owners are often glued into the same concept.
Low Budget Allotment for ERP
Financial support often leads an ERP project in the wrong direction and small to medium companies often end up with an ineffective ERP solution. Often the main reason behind is the Accountant has a lack of IT knowledge. They fail to estimate how ERP can bring ROI and profit for them.
Small Man Power
Small business usually has less man force and they always get involved to get new business and clients. So, it is hard to allocate extra time for ERP implementation and get habituate with it. Also, there is a possibility of insufficient
Employees Love Old Stuff
Not only ERP, but people also resist any new things by nature. Therefore when you will want to integrate a new system like ERP to your business, your employees may refuse to use it.
Though you may meet some obstacles in the path of centralizing your business with ERP still it will give you the best output within a short time. You can bring all the departments of your business under one roof and manage all the movements with few clicks.
Which ERP Solution is Right for Your Business?
As a small business owner, you may hesitant to automate your business with ERP solution due to the fear of excessive cost or complex managing system. However, nowadays many software companies are offering a different type of Smart ERP Solutions for easy collaboration within an organization.
They simplify the system architecture with an easy interface to install, implement, maintain and upgrade. Therefore, you can choose a CMS platform for developing your ERP system that is easy to design and modify.
WP ERP is a WordPress based ERP solution to operate the workflow of small to medium businesses with powerful HR Manager, CRM & Accounting tools. It accelerates the growth of 10,000+ Businesses over the globe last 5 years.
This flexible yet feature-rich plugin allows you to operate all the departments of your business from a single platform. Moreover, it is very user-friendly and needs one-click activation to get started. Additionally, it has 20+ modules and extensions to maximize your business growth and minimize the effort.
Bottom Line
Well, now you have a clear idea of how difficult and backdated it is to maintain your business manually. In this era of globalization, you should have the facility to operate your business through one system from anywhere and anytime.
Don’t get bothered with your budget if you are a small business owner. ERP solution has the same benefits to accelerate your business growth and increase revenue. The size of your business has no bindings anymore to integrate with Modern ERP Solution. You can customize your ERP solution that will both fit your business and budget.
So, pick an ERP solution for your small business and get ready to reap its benefits.
Hello Sabirah!
Really a good one. I just lack to understand how a ERP system can be effective to overcome the lacking like shortage of budget, employees love for outdated stuff, etc. Can you please help me out.
Hello Maruf,
Thanks for your query!
Well, an optimized ERP system lets you overview all the business processes from one platform. Also it inter connects all the departments across the company. As a result, it reduces the production costs, minimize the wastage, overall fill up all the information gapes among the departments. Therefore, it is budget friendly.
Its human nature that they take time to adapt with any new system. So, sometimes employees refuse to use any new system for their regular works. But if you can train them up properly and make them realize the advantages of ERP, they will definitely love to use it.
You can read our other contents to understand the full process of ERP implementation more deeply. Have a great day!
With all due respect….BALONEY….ERP is OUT OF REACH for TRULY small businesses.
Let’s stick with YOUR sales pitch:
1. MOST TRULY small businesses do NOT have departments, department managers, on-site IT staffs or departments, on-site CPA’s or accounting departments, inventory analysts or departments, etc….they do not have these luxuries because the OVERWHELMING majority of SMALL businesses simply CANNOT AFFORD THEM….negating the very THOUGHT of “Sharing Information”.
2. Increasing Throughput with an ERP is IMPOSSIBLE without having the personnel outlined in #1 above ALREADY IN PLACE, which, as I have already stated, is simply OUT OF REACH of TRULY small businesses….I would have to HIRE MANY more employees, JUST to service the system, inflating both my overhead AND my cost of doing business CONSIDERABLY….IN ADDITION to having to purchase the system, purchase (additional) hardware for both my front office AND the shop floor (tablets, phone APPs, terminals, AND the accompanying networking hardware for my machinery, inventory control (ALL of which I was NOT doing before), still MORE employees and hardware in the front office to accommodate the additional employees to monitor, input, sort and refine the ENORMOUS amounts of data these systems generate, etc….when is your estimated time frame that I will be receiving ANY of that precious “ROI”, that is assuming that we don’t have another economic downturn (kind of similar to the one we are in NOW), which would wipe small companies OUT if they were over leveraged by having to borrow enough to be able to get systems like these off the ground and even SEMI-operational.
3. Gaining Business Intelligence has NO chance to occur if #1 & #2 above are not achieved. And quite often they are NOT; particularly with SMALL businesses. I did CONSIDERABLE research on this dynamic; regrettably on the wrong end of a DISASTEROUS attempted implementation of a “small business” ERP system….when they failed to deliver due to MANY of the factors I have discussed above, they (more or less) told us, “sorry, all sales are final; NO refunds are ever given on software”….and walked away with a little over $40k of our money for producing….NOTHING.
Most of the benefits that you list make 3 assumptions:
1. The company ALREADY possesses the resources outlined in #1 above before any implantation commences.
2. The implementation is FULLY successful (MANY times it is NOT).
3. All other exogenous factors remain the SAME (business revenue stays the same, no recessions, etc.)….if NOT, that extra debt load and overhead COULD turn into an instant liability, NOT an asset, no matter HOW well the system functions….again, this is a risk that MOST truly small businesses are simply not able or willing to take.
I believe the ERP industry in general needs to take a hard and honest review at their marketing practices to “small” businesses. We looked at over 20 different systems, and I can state with absolute confidence that we (or any other SMALL business in our vicinity {I have been doing this since 1982; I know QUITE a few}) wouldn’t have a PRAYER of implementing ANY of them.