If you’re a business leader, you know that job one is the growth and health of your business. To grow your business, you need to use the right tools. What many in the business world don’t know is how technology — or more accurately, the wrong technology — can hold you back from doing that. It follows the old adage: “use the right tool for the right job.”
Quickbooks, and other small business solutions, are great tools, but simple ones. As your business grows in size, it also grows in complexity. You may have multiple locations, multiple distribution channels, a more complicated upstream supply chain, large and complex product and pricing offerings, or expanding inventory demands. To continue the analogy — a small hammer is not always the right tool when the construction job expands.
Is your business ready to graduate to the next tier of ERP solutions?
There are three common reasons to consider it:
- You’re encountering more challenges and errors from using outside applications your current system doesn’t support, like excel.
- You’re encountering limitations with how your current system can be configured to achieve your advancing business goals.
- You’re trying to manage inventory and distribution manually across multiple product lines or locations.
Challenges & Errors
At SMB Suite, we believe that Microsoft makes great software products. Microsoft Excel has been a mainstay of the software world for decades, and it can solve some complicated problems.
We mentioned earlier that Quickbooks and similar tools are like a small hammer. Many small-to-medium businesses use Excel as a “Swiss Army Knife” to solve problems that Quickbooks isn’t equipped to solve. This almost always involves manual data entry. It’s not a question of if manual data entry will cause a problem, but when. Human error is a major financial risk, and an avoidable one. By moving to an ERP system that is designed, configured and automated to handle everything in one application (or suite of applications), you significantly reduce your risk associated with human error.
If you want to lower your financial risk due to human error, a cloud-based ERP solution may be right for you.
Configuration Limitations
You need your _____ to connect with your _____ so you can _______.
Small-scale financial accounting solutions can address some of these issues and can link with many Point of Sale and payment systems, but lacks compatibility with more complex systems.
The beauty of a robust, cloud-based ERP system is that, on its own, an ERP system from Microsoft or Netsuite can perform many of those functions internally — all within the same system.
For what those systems can’t do — and yes, there are things that even the most robust ERP systems aren’t designed to do — there’s SaaS functionality. Cloud-based ERP systems are capable of linking seamlessly with specialized outside applications and vendors that can help solve complex configuration issues inside your ERP system.
If you’re in need of more specialized configurations for your business, moving to a cloud-based ERP solution from SMB Suite could solve many business issues, all in one place.
Inventory & Distribution
While service industry businesses don’t commonly have to confront inventory management issues, the small-to-medium businesses that do often find that “scaling up” is one of their greatest challenges.
Many small-to-medium businesses rely on employees to physically inventory materials, which dampens their ability to guarantee product delivery to increasingly immediacy-driven customers. These businesses commonly use spreadsheets or low-level inventory management software that isn’t designed for complexity and falls flat when confronted with real-world applications.
Cloud-based ERP solutions from SMB Suite not only handle inventory management and distribution, but can even enhance your internal efficiencies by flagging mislabeled inventory, identifying optimal warehousing layout, and reducing man hours needed for inaccurate, ad-hoc inventory practices.
If you’re increasingly frustrated by inventory management and distribution issues, investing in a cloud-based ERP solution from SMB Suite could streamline your processes and save you money in the long-run.
Talk to a member of our sales team today. We’d love to tell you more about how a cloud-based ERP solution from SMB Suite could help you Grow With Us. Call 866-956-1636 to get started.