Many small businesses would benefit from ERP software, but shopping around, you may find ERP system providers do not fit your workflow and are cost prohibitive. Many have bells and whistles you don’t need. You may be left feeling like you are paying for features you’ll never use or that you are trying to make do with modules that don’t fit your business operations. Some frustrated customers reach out to us because they don't feel it's beneficial to change their business model to match the software provided by ERP companies. The promise of what these ERP systems can do for you may not match the hype, price tag, or your business workflow.
We’ve helped businesses in this predicament and have developed ERP systems which incorporate existing systems, meaning we build only the parts you need and you get a system that matches your business workflow. The resultant ERP system fits your budget and aligns very closely with your need to have data flowing through department functions. As would be expected from an ERP system, customers can link any number of functional areas: Finance, Accounting, Planning, Manufacturing, Sales, Service and Maintenance, Inventory, Purchasing, and/or Shipping and Receiving.
If your business relies on parts, it can reduce chaos and red flag inform on vendors who are late or who have quality problems. Purchasing can save you money by quickly seeing what they need to order across all jobs, taking advantage of bulk order savings. If you hold a lot of inventory, it can help you print labels or decide what inventory is moving at a quicker pace and what is not. Data is consolidated but feeds different modules your employees can access via their own custom interfaces. Best of all, Management can check the health and progress of multiple projects in real time.
ERP systems can improve decision making, increase the likelihood of timely and efficient procurement of parts, and help you identify what is coming in the sales pipeline. In turn, this helps you improve customer communications and your commitment, as you can always tell them where a customer's project is in the production process. To put it another way, it helps the right hand know what the left hand is going to do, but also what it intends to do.
If you need help weighing whether an custom ERP system is right for you, give us a call.