Can My Business Handle a New Information System?

We hear this a lot. In the midst of setting up and growing a new business, the leaders are often grappling with a never-ending line up of new systems to assess, understand their benefits and encourage employees to use them.

It’s no wonder, then, that when we speak to growing enterprises, they are often overwhelmed with the plethora of new systems and tools on the market. Their decision on which one to pick for the best return on investment is often made hastily, and regretted later on.

The major concern for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is investing in a system that their employees will actually use. And the biggest way to ensure their employees use it, is to pick a system that is user-friendly, designed for their industry and market, and addresses the demands of their role.

Modern Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems focus on the ease of use of the solution for end-users. They understood that small businesses need an easy-to-adopt solution, and one that will grow with them as they expand their organisation.

As you want it

A customisable user screen can be tailored to display only the information that is required by the end user and they can hide the fields that are not applicable to them.

Familiar interface

Regardless of the module being used in the ERP system, a similar look and feel applies across all screens used. This eases the learning curve substantially, ensuring that the user can apply knowledge gained from previous modules. It also facilitates rapid adoption and enables employees to be more productive as well as being able to move from role to role with a familiar system.

There will always be a certain amount of push back in most organisations when a new system comes on the scene. But, we’ve identified below some of the common challenges faced across organisations and how ERP systems can offer benefits to the user.

1. Human resources challenges

1.1 Payroll

Inefficient onboarding process delays pay cycles and causes extra administrative burden on the team. ERP systems can automate and integrate the majority of these functions so an employee appears ‘in the system’ from day one.

1.2 Expense tracking

Too many company dollars unaccounted for leads to loss from the bottom line and frustrated employees who spend hours tracking expenses instead of focusing on their job.

ERP systems integrate expense tracking with projects, sales or marketing activities, allowing you to set up alerts to monitor expenditure and facilitating swift reimbursement.

1.3 Recruitment

Reactive recruitment is too often the norm for many organisations struggling to keep up with the demand for skills in a challenging workforce environment. Linking your operations and forecasting to your human resources activities enables proactive recruitment and talent pool initiatives to ease the burden when you need extra help.

2. Sales challenges

2.1 Silo sales

One part of your organisation working towards the same goals as the other, pursuing the same activities (even the same clients) without knowing it. ERP systems bring a new level of collaboration to your sales teams by showing a transparent and holistic view of sales activities and forecasts through the integrated customer relationship management (CRM) module.

2.2 Missing the mark(eting)

When the sales and marketing teams don’t collaborate, or have their own strategy, your organisation is missing out. Combining marketing campaign data with sales strategy is easy with an ERP system and enables everyone to stay ahead of the trend in your industry – and leverage your marketing team’s insights.

3. Marketing challenges

3.1 Too little, too late

If your SME missed the latest trend or broke into a market too late to make real waves, you’ll know how painful that can be. ERP systems offer a whole new way to predict market trends and jump in at the right time. Predictive analytics enables your marketing team to be proactive with their efforts and deliver true market insights that you might never have been able to uncover.

3.2 Intangible ROI

Traditional media and marketing campaigns are no longer effective when they can’t offer the return on investment you expect. Agile routes to market provide lower risk, and higher returns for SMEs without large R&D budgets. An ERP system brings you closer to your customers and their needs so you can tailor your products and services to them in a much quicker timeframe, without breaking your budget.

4. Finance challenges

4.1 Human error

Relying on systems can be scary for some new SMEs, but relying solely on human input should cause greater worry to SMEs. When you look at month and year end activities, the amount of extra people needed can become expensive and difficult to manage. SAP Business One automates these processes for you and enables your finance team to focus on other cost-reducing activities.

4.2 No bank balance

It’s astounding how many CEOs (and CFOs) don’t have up to date and accurate business data. You wouldn’t expect this from your personal banking, so why put up with it in your business? An ERP system delivers up-to-the-minute accurate statistics and reports, anywhere, on your device of choice.

5. IT challenges

5.1 ‘Not my job’ syndrome

SMEs often hire IT professionals for their technical skills, but those skills become sidelined when the business needs trouble shooters and help desk people. The skilled IT professionals then run the risk of becoming de-skilled because they don’t need to keep up to date with the latest technology when you’re stuck with legacy systems that need constantly fixing.

An ERP system makes your IT team’s life easier by delivering an easy-to-use platform that is intuitive to the needs of everyone’s role. Your skilled IT workers can then go back to providing innovative business support.

Of course, we understand that there will always be a certain amount of training and change management needed for such a large uptake of a new system. But we never cease to be amazed at just how quickly SMEs are able to adopt the positive changes brought about by ERP systems.

Image Credit: Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

A version of this post was published by me at Blue Ocean Systems' Blog