Seven reasons it’s worth taking your hand off your wallet.
"Those who have an effective ERP solution in play will tell you it quickly pays for itself - saving you money, time and frustration."
You’re overwhelmed with work, your staff are increasingly frustrated and overworked, you’re making mistakes and losing paperwork. If this sounds depressingly familiar, it could be time for an ERP solution.
ERP software is designed to help manage paperwork and administration, automate functions to reduce human error, and make your business more efficient overall. Although implementing the software is perceived by some as costly and time consuming, those who have an effective ERP solution in play will tell you it quickly pays for itself - saving you money, time and frustration.
Here are seven signs you need an integrated ERP business management system in your life:
1: Too many projects, too many products
If your business is dealing with multiple projects, hundreds or thousands of product lines, reporting, and invoicing across multiple locations, it’s easy to make mistakes. You might have project managers with invoices piled on their desks or crammed into folders. Papers get lost, invoices and orders never get sent, customers end up disappointed.
Some of our customers have up to 500,000 SKUs - that’s a huge number of items to track, particularly if they need to be updated constantly. In the motor industry, for example, parts are always changing and being superseded - keeping track of where they are, what they cost, and if they are still current, is a critical and complex job where high volumes creates disconnects. Greentree not only manages this effortlessly but offers plenty of opportunity for growth and expansion.
2: Growing too fast
Rapid growth is great - but it can be difficult to keep up, particularly if there’s a lag period between expansion and hiring new staff. If the number of products doubles for example, it can be hard to adapt your staff and systems to cope with the increased volume of activity.
At Greentree, we’ve got customers who turn over 5 million a year, and others who do over a billion. Some of our clients have 20 staff members, others have over 4,000. It’s about scaling solutions to suit your needs, and choosing software that will grow with you.
3: Double talk
Of course, you may already use software systems to manage workload, paperwork, reporting and other business functions. But if those systems don’t talk to each other, you’re probably double handling information and working from multiple versions of the truth.
If your staff keep finding errors or discrepancies between departments, struggle to collaborate because they’re working from disparate systems, and waste time re-entering data, it could definitely be time for a fully integrated ERP solution.
4: Stuck in spreadsheet hell
Still using spreadsheets to manage data? You’re not alone. Some huge companies, managing hundreds of millions of dollars, still rely on them.
The problem is, spreadsheets may appear on a computer screen, but they’re still essentially manual - which makes them vulnerable to human error. Mis-enter one number and you could end up with a huge and costly error. Or fail to save the latest version and you’re suddenly working with the wrong numbers. It’s way too easy to make huge mistakes.
5: Admin staff are taking over
Have you hired new admin staff recently? Even if they do a great job, they’re still costing you money without bringing any revenue in. And when it comes to paperwork, people will never be as effective as technology.
An ERP system is a single investment that delivers 8+ years of use. Do the maths; compared to paying multiple admin staff for that long an ERP system is definitely a more cost effective option.
6: It's all in your head
Do you have essential business info that only exists in someone’s mind? Do you struggle to continue with a project when someone leaves?
The strength of a business lies in how well you cope with changes to staff. If your systems are good, then key processes and information is accessible to everyone - not stuck in the longest serving staff member’s head.
7: Dots not connecting
How much time do your staff spend looking for the information they need? How about the time spent doing repetitive, labour intensive tasks? And what about you? How much more value could you add to your organisation if you didn’t have to spend time fixing others’ mistakes or smoothing over issues with customers?
To answer these kinds of issues, you need an integrated ERP system with inbuilt Operational Intelligence (OI) to connect the dots for you. It ensures your information doesn’t sit in silos and can be effectively delivered to everyone in your organisation at precisely the right time, in the right format.
It also automates your business processes so that all of the dots are connected right across the organisation so that nothing can fall through the cracks. This dramatically reduces the potential for errors to occur and if they do, you’re immediately alerted to the fact so you can deal with a small issue rather than have it escalate.
If you’re experiencing any of these signs, get in touch to find out what Verde can do for you.
