Eleven ways you’ll look good with a new ERP

The gold in an ERP solution is that it provides you with a platform to support better business practices, reduce inefficiencies, and give you access to masses of real-time and accurate data that you can use to ramp up your decision-making and performance.

So, given that you understand that to benefit from your ERP, you need to rely on user capabilities, how the solution has been implemented, and the best practice functionality that comes as part of the package – let’s look at 11 ERP-enabled wins that are within easy grasp.

1: Make ‘work anywhere’ productivity a thing

While you may have had enjoyed some mobile capabilities with your more recently adopted applications, moving to a cloud-based ERP introduces your team to a whole new level of enhanced productivity and flexibility. Everything they need to do their job is securely and immediately available (although endpoint security is still your responsibility!) whether they’re travelling, working from home, in lockdown, or the office. All that’s needed is an internet connection and a smart device.

2: Automate and streamline the boring stuff

One of the beauties of an ERP solution is that it gives you the ability to automate repetitive or manual data input tasks. This helps you optimise the resources you have – so even at your busiest, there’s often no need to add on more employees.  

With automation and digitalisation, the days of paper and data-entry errors are largely gone. When all your departments (think finance, sales, customer support, marketing, production, projects, warehouse and distribution, manufacturing, HR, supply chain etc.) are linked, you can move data through the business with speed and accuracy.  

3: Embrace real-time reporting

With a single version of the truth and ready-to-use reporting, the days of needing a week to prepare a report (and more if someone asks to throw new or different data into the mix) are gone. Phew.

Most ERPs come with a wide range of inbuilt reports that you can generate within minutes with the touch of an on-screen button, and you or your partner can build customised reports. Best of all, it’s goodbye to temperamental spreadsheets and tedious data exports/imports/updates from disparate applications.

4: Scale, pivot, do backflips

In the ‘good old days’, growth or a change in direction often required more flexibility than business software could offer. Today’s ERPs (especially those in the cloud) have modular structures that allow you to adjust the application according to current needs and conditions. So, diversifying revenue sources, expanding, or reducing or rethinking your business is easy. From small changes like adding new products or employees, to significant changes like adding new divisions, companies or countries, your ERP won’t make a mountain out of the proverbial molehill.

5: Get a better grip on money

From saving money by optimising processes, rationalising inventory to reduce overheads, improving and automating invoicing, to gaining 100% visibility across the entire business (be it local or global), complying with local taxation or financial requirements, and working in multiple currencies and companies, to accelerating closing off your books at year-end - your new ERP should do it all. Effortlessly.  

6: Throw out all the old add-ons

For those who have moved from a legacy financial system, it’s time to say goodbye to all those hangers-on. With a fully-featured ERP, you can relegate most of the third-party add-ons you relied on to the trash. And with them - the licensing and integration upkeep costs, and the cybersecurity risks posed by often installed-then-forgotten unpatched applications.  

7: Finally, all the truth in one place

If one thing holds back most businesses, it’s an inability to make good and timely decisions. The ones you can only make with access to all the latest and historical data from every part of the business. While the phrase ‘one source of the truth’ (along with ‘digital transformation’) gets repeated to the point of annoyance during ERP conversations over a morning coffee, having real-time insights into your business is, in fact, one of the most significant benefits of all.

8: Get supply chain and inventory under control

Any business is only as good as its ability to source, stock and supply the right products. In the right amounts, at the right time, and for the right price. A failure to do any of these can mean a shipment of stock that’s so delayed it’s worthless, a warehouse full of expensive stock gathering dust not generating income, and the inability to compete because your pricing is way off-kilter. Your ERP – with its single source of the truth and 100% visibility - will help you manage all these issues. End of story.

9: Way better customer service

When you suddenly have all your customer data, from sales to orders to despatch status to account details, in one place, you can’t fail to improve the customer experience (CX). It’s easier for your sales, marketing, and support teams to communicate with your customers (and take a personalised and proactive approach ) and speeds up your ability to respond to their requests. And as you now have real-time data at your fingertips, you can analyse patterns in customer behaviour and trends, so you can develop new products or introduce new services or brands.

10: Give your IT team a break!

Harking back to the cloud again, a modern cloud-based ERP reduces your reliance on in-house resources for support. Because of ongoing and automated system updates, your ERP stays evergreen and, barring any unaddressed vulnerabilities in your wider technology environment, secure.  

11: Happier C-level

A happy C-level makes a happy workforce. So on-time reports and analysis, complete business visibility across departments, branches and countries, the ability to grow, and reduce operational costs, are all guaranteed to lift spirits.

As said at the beginning, the work’s only partly done once you adopt a new ERP – but the right application gives you all the tools, data, and insights to make a significant difference to your business. And the ability to turn potential into reality is possibly the most valuable benefit of all.