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For small and medium-sized businesses, growth is welcome news. But growth comes with big decisions like determining how and choosing when you’ll make business management technology investments. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are critical tools for helping businesses manage that next level of growth.
How do you know when it’s time to trade up from basic or legacy business management software to a more comprehensive ERP system? Here are three key signs that it’s time for your organization to invest in an ERP solution.
3 Signs You Need an ERP Solution Pronto
1. Decentralized Data
For businesses to thrive, improve their operations, and build a base of happy, satisfied customers, they have to quickly collect and analyze data. But valuable, business-enhancing insights will be hard to discover if your business management solution makes you:
- Manually gather reams of data from different departments and applications.
- Evaluate that data through hard-to-read, unsynchronized spreadsheets (which are error prone, not secure, and lacking in visualization tools).
A user-friendly ERP solution can address these weaknesses by being a centralized source of information. Companywide data automatically feeds into and out of the ERP system, providing your teams with access to the updated, real-time, accurate information they need to make strategic, data-driven decisions.
2. Disconnected Systems
Relying on disconnected systems for your accounting, CRM, sales, and manufacturing needs (and more) can create plenty of frustration.. For instance, to gather information for shared projects, team members have to log into every system—wasting time that they could be using on higher-value tasks.
Another issue? Complying with evolving local, state, national, and international accounting standards, and statutes. Disconnected systems make this a complex, time-intensive endeavor that, even after all that effort, can still produce inaccurate results. And inaccurate results can lead to expensive fines and penalties.
But, through the right ERP solution, your applications seamlessly integrate via open APIs into a single, open and powerful platform, providing a unified solution that can handle all your operational needs.
3. Inadequate Accounting Software
When they first open their doors, SMBs often choose simple, standalone accounting software solutions, like QuickBooks, to automatically track their income and expenses, manage their financial operations, and assist with tax requirements. And, just as often, they very quickly outgrow that basic software.
In a recent article on upgrading accounting software, I note that QuickBooks is unable to handle the growth of, provide streamlined data for, or manage the complex accounting needs of companies with sophisticated supply chain, inventory, and warehouse logistics. But a comprehensive cloud ERP solution can handle all that and more.
An ERP solution’s embedded financial and accounting software automates critical tasks and transactions, eliminating manual data entry and providing a complete picture of your business’s financial health in real time.
It’s Time to Implement a Cloud ERP Solution That Will Help You Grow
If your data is disorganized, your systems are disconnected, and your accounting software is deficient and can’t fit your growing needs, you can be confident that it’s time to implement a comprehensive cloud ERP solution, like Acumatica. Acumatica provides the advanced features and functionalities you need to create a streamlined, efficient business that seamlessly connects to vital applications at an affordable price.
For an example of how Acumatica helps businesses succeed, look no further than Smartnumbers—a company that delivers telecom fraud prevention and customer authentication solutions to call centers via a SaaS platform.
Smartnumbers was running on 12 siloed systems and a separate financial solution, which Chief Financial Officer Ryan Low says caused a lot of problems. “Visibility across the business was difficult. Only certain people had access to the data. So, their reporting was heavily relied on but not timely because it was only done once a month or on an ad hoc basis when someone asked.”
Additional challenges included working with inflexible, fragile systems and having to move data between systems manually. This meant the Smartnumbers team couldn’t adjust to their continually changing needs. So, they decided to look for a user-friendly, cloud-based, scalable ERP solution, and they found it in Acumatica.
With Acumatica, Smartnumbers lowered its technology spending by 80% and has:
- Gained real-time visibility into business-wide data.
- Enabled employees to focus on higher-value initiatives.
- Reduced processing times—some by up to 90%.
- Decreased month-end close from ten days to just one day.
- And more.
Says Chief Operating Officer Chris Drake, “From a technology and operations point of view, Acumatica ticks all the boxes. It’s engaging for users, scalable, flexible to meet your needs, and grows with you as a business. Acumatica has helped us expand and grow into new markets that have a positive impact on our business.”
To learn more about why businesses need ERP solutions, contact our team of experts today. And download our complimentary ERP System Evaluation Checklist to compare Acumatica against other leading ERP vendors across five critical categories.
