Many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) use pieced-together spreadsheets, applications and other tools to maintain their financial information. This kind of patchwork system requires a lot of manual effort and duplicated data entry.
Fortunately, streamlining your financial processes is as simple as using a cloud ERP solution. Such all-in-one platforms are robust enough to track all the data you need without limitations. After all, it’s better to maintain one system than five, right?
Here are four ways that cloud ERP systems help to reduce manual and duplicated tasks.
- Cloud-based platforms are integrated: This means one system handles everything from entering an order or reporting that something’s been shipped and delivered. When you have all your invoice information in several different systems that don’t talk to each other, the risk of mistakes is significant. Maintaining many financial spreadsheets is also time-consuming. To maintain accuracy between the sheets, accountants must take multiple steps to transfer data and verify changes are made at every location. For companies that want one source of the truth or one set of numbers that’s accurate, cloud-based ERP systems are the clear choice.
- Quality cloud ERP systems help ensure that proper audit trails are produced in your accounting system: If someone changes something in the system — adds a figure, delete funds, move accounts around, etc. — the action is tracked. The system tells you who made the change and when the change happened. This way, when something harmful happens, you can restore an earlier version of the system and determine how the error occurred.
- Cloud ERP systems are great for disaster recovery efforts: If your data is in the cloud, it’s getting backed up at least every day. For companies using an on-premises solution, which are not automated to back up data, the risk for error is significantly higher. Even if these legacy systems are programed to make backups, the data is still located in the same place as your office. That’s a problem if your office is damaged or destroyed. With the cloud, data restoration can be nearly instantaneous.
- Outsourcing your financial processes to the cloud means you have fewer IT issues to worry about: Service pack applications and patches, virus protection, data management and application upgrades are all included in your cloud subscription costs. If you take those tasks off of your internal IT department’s plate, it can focus on core business issues rather than day-to-day maintenance tasks. Cloud programs keep your limited resources from being constrained. It allows everyone to focus on big picture revenue-generating processes.
At the end of the day, cloud services free your company to spend more time building the business, and focusing on what you do best as an organization.