Ready to Switch to ERP Software?
Many businesses start with a simple accounting system to manage their financial data. They supplement their basic system with third-party tools like Microsoft Excel to track inventory and Outlook to manage contacts and appointments. It’s a good way to get your operations up and running quickly as you just start out. But is your accounting system still up to the job?
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As your business grows in complexity and transactions increase, the tools that once supported you may now be standing in your way. Here are some common challenges that indicate your business has outgrown its accounting software and that you are ready to switch from accounting to ERP software:
You're wasting time dealing with multiple systems that can’t talk to each other
If you are using multiple separate software systems to manage different aspects of your business, you understand first-hand how frustrating it can be when the systems don’t link up. If your accounting software could link to your database, your business processes would be much more efficient. Instead, your team is stuck with manually re-entering and reconciling data across various systems. That’s a lot of time and effort wasted on manual data entry. Then there is also the risk that all that manual work could lead to errors, which can add up in costs as you must find and fix them. Ultimately, if you don’t have a central source of real-time data, chances are high that you have duplicate or conflicting data.
You rely on spreadsheets for inventory tracking.
If you find yourself using spreadsheets to track and update inventory records, it may be time to upgrade from your accounting software. Managing stock with spreadsheets can be risky because of human error. Not only are mistakes costly, like incorrect items being shipped out, but they could also affect your customer relationships and brand image. If you want to improve your inventory management, adopting an ERP solution is key. It allows you to monitor everything from one platform, track the movement of each item through its lifecycle and even help predict demand, allocate resources, and optimise your stock.
Creating reports is complicated and doesn’t give you the information you need.
Your accounting software can generate reports on your financials. But suppose you want to know which product is selling the best, which region is performing well, or how that stock shortage affected sales? That kind of visibility will be difficult to achieve. You may try to work around this by exporting your financial data to Excel and cross-referencing those with data from other business areas – but this takes up a lot of time. It’s also not the most accurate way to go about it. What’s needed here is detailed and accurate business intelligence. BI dashboards can give you real-time reporting and analytics across the business and are often included as part of an ERP software solution, such as Dynamics 365 Business Central.
There is no forecasting or budgeting, and you rely a lot on guesswork.
Business instincts are all well and good, but at a certain stage, you need the cold hard facts to help you make better business decisions. If you have data sitting in different systems or documents, it is difficult to get accurate information to do the correct analysis. To get access to features like intelligent sales and inventory forecasting, you’ll need an ERP solution.
How ERP Software Will Help
The decision to adopt an ERP solution is critical if you are facing these challenges and you want to keep growing your business. A cloud ERP solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can help your growing business by streamlining all your processes, unifying business areas, improving decision-making with real-time reporting, increasing efficiency and much more. And by selecting a cloud ERP solution, you can get your business up and running in no time – without requiring a significant upfront investment.
Need Help?
Once you’ve determined it is time to switch from your accounting to ERP software, the next step is choosing the right solution. Book a consultation with Storm today to see how your organisation can benefit from an ERP Solution.
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