Your considering moving from an accounting system or excel sheets into a larger piece of software for your business. The term that keeps coming up is ERP (Enterprise resource planning) software.
What is ERP?
What will it do for you?
As you may have guessed by now ERP stands for Enterprise resource planning, it is generally reffered to as software but actually it is not software alone. It is software that connects each department in the business, but it is surrounded by good business processes that make sure the information needed is collected how and when you need it.
In manufacturing and distribution ERP will connect sales, accounting, inventory, shipping, purchasing, engineering, CRM, production and many other departments into one software package. The idea behind it is to reduce duplicate entries and software packages. To ensure that all people in the organization are working with the same information in a co-ordinated effort.
ERP doesn't do anything you can't. It just does it faster really.
Here is an example. When using an ERP system, when you ship something in the system, there is an automatic communication with the accounting portion of the software that says "hey we have an invoice hear to process". It is all automatic in some cases the invoice gets sent without an human interaction with the system.
There are many examples of how ERP can automate your business. But again there is no magic involved, just automation.
The key here is that the automation is not necessarily reserved for the shop floor, the administrative staff from owners to customer service people should see great benefit in a connected system.
Anyone how reads my articles or blogs will tell you I always say that every company is different. And it is true. You can make the same things in the same way as someone else but the business's are different. You people's skill set are different, your corporate culture is different, so what it does in each environment is slightly different.
In general though we see many smaller companies benefit from using ERP in the following ways
Reduces double entry
Provides reports easily and quickly
Provides automation to the administrative people of the organization
Enables organizations to control inventory and production
Provides tracability of materials, purchases, jobs, invoices etc.
Make no mistake ERP is a big endeavour. To acquire, set-up and use a system takes work. Like anything else in life, if it comes too easy it can't be that good. So strap in and get ready for a ride, it may be bumpy but the other side has a pot of gold if it is done correctly.
I have seen many companies push the decision on ERP off for as long as they can, dreading the work. When they finally do decide to move forward they wonder how they did it any other way. By deciding to implement an ERP system their managers can focus on managing not fire fighting. When that is the case you are ready for growth but until then your growth will be stunted because your key people are too busy in the day to day to plan anything else.
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ERP123 site,,, ERP123 is flexible affordable and comprehensive and the site has some good advice and resources. Demo is available upon request at info@erp123.biz. Users can request a demo by sending an email . Visit our blog at
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