As your company grows, you must put more effort into streamlining your business operations to sustain growth. When data is stored in disparate systems, it can create significant challenges for businesses. Managing different functions such as accounting, purchasing, sales, HR, customer relations, and the supply chain is difficult on multiple systems.
In this blog, you will learn:
- What are the five ways disparate systems hurt business productivity and efficiency?
- Why is ERP critical to help increase productivity for small and midsize manufacturers?
- How does ERP provide a 360-degree view of business operations?
- How does ERP help leaders with business intelligence tools?
- How does ERP help small manufacturers achieve agility?
- How does ERP promote quality control for improved production and a better customer experience?
- Why is ERP software better for reporting, tracking, and managing resources?
- How does ERP software help manufacturers outperform the competition?
Let’s dive into the five primary ways disparate systems hurt your business’s productivity and efficiency.
1. Losing time with manual processes
Having disparate systems in an organization leads to wasted time and money. If the systems aren’t integrated, transferring data from one system to another is a time-consuming, manual task that diverts your team from focusing on other high-value activities. If they are integrated, the IT department must ensure that the various applications still work together every time there is an update or upgrade.
2. Data entry makes your data vulnerable to loss
Having the same data in two or more systems may lead to inconsistencies. Imagine a customer’s order being shipped to the wrong address because the shipping software was not in sync with the order entry system. These mistakes can hurt the business’s reputation and can even lead to financial loss.
When running a business on disparate systems, achieving data consistency and providing data protection is challenging. There are too many opportunities for human error, which leads to decreased productivity and efficiency.
3. Slow access to information
Getting an accurate view of the company’s operations can be challenging when you have multiple applications. When data is fragmented and scattered across the organization, creating reports and searching for needed data is time-consuming.
The reporting capability is one of the frequent complaints when disparate systems are used in an organization. Making decisions based on old data can affect productivity and delay processes.
4. The IT landscape is complex and expensive to manage
Whether you are paying a monthly subscription or have purchased perpetual licenses for disparate systems, the cost of buying and maintaining these software systems is often higher than comprehensive, end-to-end software.
Also, when these software systems are deployed on-premise, it becomes critical to have a team of IT personnel to manage and maintain the systems. This adds more cost to the overall budget.
5. Training employees on multiple systems is slow and challenging
Onboarding employees and training them takes time. The time taken in this process can significantly increase when the network systems and software are complex. Learning various software user interfaces, entering data, and transferring data to other systems manually can be challenging for employees.
A better path to sustainable growth by running simple:
Run simple by saying goodbye to standalone tools and disparate systems. Deploying a flexible and scalable operational platform can achieve your corporate growth strategy. SMEs need a simple yet intelligent ERP solution that can scale as the company grows and positively impact end-to-end business processes.
Small manufacturers can benefit in many ways with the right ERP system. ERP software allows you to support new business models, sell across multiple channels, and go global with the resources needed to meet regulatory, language, and currency needs efficiently. With streamlined and simplified processes, manufacturers can work smarter to fast-track growth.
Why is ERP critical to help increase productivity for small and midsize manufacturers?
Small manufacturing companies have limited staff members, many who wear multiple hats. ERP helps managers handle multiple tasks more efficiently and easily see how well operations are performing. ERP provides real-time visibility into all departments’ productivity and bridges information gaps across business operations.
ERP allows manufacturers to do forward scheduling to produce a greater quantity of goods in a faster amount of time. During the pandemic, small manufacturers had their supply chains disrupted. ERP helped small manufacturing businesses mitigate supply chain risk and achieve growth. It is able to forecast inventory demand by analyzing historical patterns and sales orders.
How does ERP provide a 360-degree view of business operations?
We live in a data-driven world where it is difficult to make smart business decisions without intelligent data. Gathering data from disparate systems is time-consuming, costly, and error-prone. Investing in Enterprise Resource Planning software can save countless hours and dollars down the road.
ERP helps companies consolidate information in one database, to make quick and informed decisions with a visual presentation of key information. ERP allows you to check KPIs on dashboards or access critical business reports easily.
Investing in a well-integrated, comprehensive ERP is the most effective way to overcome data silos and increase visibility. It helps to align teams, improve communication, and provide a 360-degree view of business operations.
How does ERP help leaders with business intelligence tools?
Business Intelligence (BI) uses business analytics, data mining, and visualization tools to transform data into actionable insights. Organizations can analyze historical data and patterns to see business opportunities. Business intelligence provides small manufacturers with a competitive edge.
BI enables decision-makers to get a clear view of how each department is performing and if there are any issues. BI dashboards allow them to evaluate performance metrics and uncover trends. With role-based dashboards, advanced cash flow forecasting, Available-to-Promise reports, etc., ERP for small manufacturers fosters better performance.
How does ERP help small manufacturers achieve agility?
Agility helps an organization’s ability to renew, adapt, change, and succeed in a rapidly evolving business world. ERP provides agility to small companies by:
- Delivering business intelligence data 24×7
- Encouraging business process improvements
- Leveraging mobile technologies
- Offering automation for reduced errors and fast-paced production
- Utilizing cloud architecture and modular design
Small-scale manufacturers must be agile to adapt to industry change. To ensure your business performs better than your competitors, you need close-knit connections and enhanced communication with customers, vendors, and employees that an ERP system provides.
How does ERP promote quality control for improved production and a better customer experience?
ERP provides a single platform to:
- Discover quality defects and resolve them with corrective and preventive actions
- Run QC tests and capture results from anywhere using mobile devices
- Meet industry, regulatory, and customer requirements
- Provides quality data to the necessary departments for traceability and increased control
Why is ERP software better for reporting, tracking, and managing resources?
No matter how complex your business data is, ERP software, can run data-intensive analysis in real-time. ERP provides high-functioning dashboards, reports, as well as resource tracking across departments.
Even a non-technical person with minimal training can produce reports (forecast data, sales, demand tracking, item demand and forecast, period summary, etc.) within seconds. Reports created with an ERP system are clear and to the point.
Reporting tools in ERP provide a basis to establish, measure, and analyze your business performance. You can accurately extract, aggregate, and analyze information from various sources to make more informed decisions.
How does ERP software help manufacturers outperform the competition?
Moving to a modern ERP system can bring multiple business advantages. These include increased revenue, better customer satisfaction, greater efficiency, and increased flexibility. As you embark on the journey of selecting ERP for your business, be sure to learn about ERP selection criteria, deployment (cloud, on-premise, or hybrid) options, and cloud ERP benefits.
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