Deploying ERP now or later?
If you’ve considered an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution, but have concluded the financial outlay is prohibitive and have justified not deploying ERP until the bottom line improves, think again.
No doubt, as part of your deliberations, you’ll have factored in the costs associated with an ERP implementation programme and the demands on time and resources that such a project will bring and surmised it all adds up to, well, too much expense.
If this is the case, it really is time to think again; the true cost to a business of not deploying an ERP solution when you should is as disturbing as the risk to your business survival you’ll be taking by opting out.
Customer satisfaction and ERP
Consider the impact on the relationships with your customers you’ve taken so much time and effort to nurture. As your business grows and your inventory multiplies, the need to meet their expectations and maintain a superlative customer experience cannot be compromised.
If you don’t have an ERP platform to connect your stock, sales, accounts and customer data seamlessly, you’re in danger of failing to track their products, replenish your inventory to meet demand and answer their questions about shipping, purchase history or other financials. If you allow customer satisfaction to slide, retention problems and losses will follow.
ERP: a single source of truth
Relying on disparate and legacy systems is easily done, but that comfort comes at a price. If you’re using spreadsheets, desktop apps, finance software, customer databases and run a physical paper trail, you’re already in risky business territory. The wasted time and human resources spent upgrading, customising and maintaining systems will eat more doggedly into your budget than the decision of delaying and deploying the ERP solution you rejected. Not forgetting to mention the data silos, confusion and contradictory data that will result when a multitude of processes are running separately.
Operational efficiency, collaboration and ERP
When decision makers plan, project and forecast for future growth using an ERP solution, their routes to optimal operational efficiency are based on business intelligence that’s accurate and timely. Reporting that relies on inconsistent information from cross departmental data coupled with a lack of real-time insights and analytics makes for an imperfect science that will lead to scaling up that’s ill-timed or disproportionate to growth or could potentially impede it altogether.
Then there is the collaborative impact, or rather the lack of it. Those multiple processes, systems and data silos make for fragmented communication and a working environment that will be vulnerable to error, inaccuracy and wasted time.
Eradicating business barriers by deploying ERP
The truth is an all-embracing ERP solution will eradicate all these impediments; you’ll eliminate data silos, redundant data, excessive IT activity, inadequate reporting, low customer retention and scalability issues. An integrated, single source of truth will also elevate your operational efficiency, communications, and collaboration to an all-time high – and everyone in the organisation will thank you for that. In terms of expense, you’ll witness reduced operating and administrative costs and improvements in inventory management and on-time delivery.
In actual fact, implementing a full-throttle, end-to-end ERP platform, such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Dynamics 365 Business Central, delivers a remarkably low TCO (total cost of ownership) and a welcome return on investment that will ensure your business will remain agile and perfectly positioned for future growth.
If you want to talk to trusted ERP implementation consultants who can show why deploying a powerful ERP solution will make sound economic sense to you now and in the years ahead, contact the TVision team.
