With the New Year fast approaching, your company has decided to adopt/upgrade to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Congratulations! Making the decision to adopt/upgrade to an ERP system already puts you ahead of your competition.
An ERP system is a powerful tool that helps you efficiently analyze, interpret, and execute the core activities of each department of your business on a day-to-day basis. Companies who seek to adopt/upgrade to an ERP system do so in order to integrate the different programs they're using for different departments into one suite. An ERP system helps reduce costs because any previous delays or duplication of work is avoided. For example, a company may calculate their sales revenue using one type of software meanwhile using separate software to produce a financial report. An ERP system integrates the two actions whereby once the sales revenue is calculated, the ERP system uses the same information to produce a financial report. A benefit of having these separate processes integrated is that the same information flows from each department which results in less errors made, in addition to better business decisions made. Resources such as time and staff are reduced (not to mention the complexity) which boosts the company's bottom-line.
Other benefits and features of an ERP System include:
• Access to all the company's information across all departments in real-time
• Stronger customer relations through better access of customer information as part of your company's practices in customer relationship management (CRM)
• Improved controls at each stage of the supply chain
• Enhanced security with access to a single set of user settings to better protect your company's information
• Less training and implementation necessary because all staff are trained to use the same system
Consider the following when adopting/upgrading to an ERP system:
Costs & Benefits
• What is your budget?
• What is your firm looking to achieve?