5 Signs that Your Company Needs an ERP Solution

The global economic outlook suggests that a recovery is well underway. If you have experienced any type of growth within your company, yours is a living example of this recovery and the potential for sustainable profits. Such growth does not come without pains, however, and the ability to continue with “business-as-usual” processes generally abates as your activities and revenues increase.

You may be looking around the market for solutions that will enable efficient growth, unsure of how exactly to meet your needs. One key to identifying the right solution is to first identify those growing pains that are making you look at alternative processes in the first place. By examining your current status, you can identify five different signs that indicate your need for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. This is not to guide your selection in the right platform or provider, but to first help you to identify that an ERP solution is the right fit.

1. Rapid Business Growth has led to Disorganization

Whether you are naturally organized or not, you understand the virtues of organization when trying to run a successful business. When you first opened your doors, the information you needed to track at that time could be captured in the appropriate methods and reviewed as necessary. Monthly meetings with your bookkeeper and managers provided you with the information you needed to be able to assess the status of the business and make decisions moving forward.

Jump to today and your business growth still demands a focused effort on organization, but your standard methods for capturing and reviewing information are making it more difficult for you to effectively manage the business. In fact, you may have stepped into a role of oversight, moving others into the decision-making position. They are relying on disparate information systems to make those decisions, which is causing you to take more time to get your products and/or services to market. As this information is harder to track and integration is lacking, you are actually holding the business back from the growth potential that is knocking on your door.

With the implementation of ERP software, you can gain the organization tools you need to sustain your current growth. Robust ERP software puts everything on one platform, from inventory order management to accounting processes, from supply chain optimization to warehouse management and everything in between, you can access all of your processes and information through one portal. All departments are seamlessly integrated so all players can see all activities in real-time so decisions can be made on-the-fly and you can focus on productivity.

2. You Have Gained More Clients and Employees – and Spreadsheets Just Can’t Cut it Anymore

Whether your increase in people is on the inside of your firm, or the outside, the more people there are to oversee and serve, the more information you need to manage. In the early days, the spreadsheet was a great tool to keep all of your critical information in one place. When you start adding more clients and more employees, however, that spreadsheet is the exact tool that will get you unorganized. Suddenly, all of that financial information you need to track has become too complicated for your standard practices.