As 2020 fast approaches, it presents a great opportunity to review business operations over the past year and what can be improved. For many small businesses, they will reach a point in the lifecycle of their business when they outgrow the start-up systems in place for managing operations. That’s when you know it’s time to do your research into the range of small business ERP software on the market. Finding the right small business ERP software for your specific needs will play a major part in the growth of your business from start-up phase to established business.
At Foresiight, we work with small to medium sized business across a range of industries, from hardware and pharmacy, wholesale and retail and lots in between. How do these businesses know when it’s time to invest in small business ERP software?
We’ve been partnering with small businesses for over 30 years and during this time we’ve found some key reasons why our clients need an ERP software solution. Often we hear that business operations are slowly down processes that should be more efficient and require less human resource to be effective. Challenges with stock visibility, stock availability and sales forecasting are common. If your business is experiencing issues like this you are not alone!
Here are 5 reasons given by our clients in answer to the question “why did you seek small business ERP software?”
1. “We have different software for different areas of the business, this makes processes ‘clunky’ and inefficient.”
When you have separate systems in place, none of the these talk to each other. For example your accounting team use one system for managing finance and sales staff use a completely different system for customer orders. The process of taking orders, entering them into the accounting system and fulfilment is manual and laborious. This takes up time that could be much better spent elsewhere. It also “interrupts” the smooth running of your business.
2. “Accounting is so time consuming, I know there’s a better way.”
Using paper-based invoices and sales orders will take up endless head hours each week. The workload is increased by the need to manually enter accounting data into different systems. Overall, the result is a lot of wasted time.
For end of financial year, consolidating and reconciling financial data across systems and multiple spreadsheets becomes a huge task. With the right small business ERP software say goodbye to the EOFY nightmare.
3. “I can’t access the information I need about my business and there’s a lot of guesswork involved when making business decisions.”
It is usually the case that best business decisions are well-informed and based on accurate information. Without small business ERP software you may struggle to understand sales margins, to complete forecasting, to recognise your best selling products and so on. You need these insights to make the business decisions that will enable sustainable growth.
4. “As the business has grown, my customers have become less satisfied with the service we provide.”
When a business is weighed down by inefficient processes, this becomes so much more than an internal business issue as often it is your customers that suffer. For example, if you don’t have your stock levels under control to ensure that the right stock is available for a customer, at the precise time and location that they want to purchase, then you will have one unhappy customer. Poor customer satisfaction will decrease loyalty and your customer may take their business elsewhere.
5. “We don’t have control over our stock and it’s costing our business.”
Effective small business stock control is vital for the success of any business that handles stock or inventory. The right small business ERP software will mean that you can track best-selling products against those are not selling (and may even result in wastage). Stock may need to be discounted in order to sell and avoid wastage but without the right data to tell you this there’s a lot of guess work involved.
Talk to the Foresiight team about how we can help grow your business in 2020 and beyond.
