If there’s one common challenge that unites every business, it’s the ever-pressing need to stay on top in a global and increasingly competitive environment. With the likes of eCommerce and the all-important aspects of online branding, today’s businesses have more factors to contend with than even some of the biggest companies that came before them. The solution? It lies in the right tools and technology that can give even the smallest businesses a leg-up.
When seeking out these solutions, the right ERP system should be at the core of a business’ tech stack. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, and it can help businesses all sizes enjoy improved accessibility and efficiency at every level. Here’s a closer look at seven key benefits you can expect when you integrate one into your organization.
#1 Standardize Business Processes
Standardizing your business’ processes is imperative to increasing your profitability by utilizing your established best practices consistently across your business. Of course, with every department and team working with different practices and processes, achieving this consistency can seem impossible. Fortunately, an ERP system will do the hard work for you.
With an ERP system, you’ll be able to standardize your processes throughout your business, like by establishing a consistent way for customer service reps to answer questions or for salesmen to conduct demonstrations. These standards go further, encompassing warehouses management, accounting, and literally every aspect of your operations to ensure the utmost efficiency and productivity — and it’s all possible thanks to your ERP software, which works to establish and enforce all of your best practices.
#2 Integrate Departments
Essentially, ERP systems help bring all of your business’ functions into one place, thus making the resulting data accessible on one single platform for the entire organization. By doing so, an ERP system gives all of your teams and employees across departments access to consistent, up-to-the-minute accurate information to inform their decision-making.
This also significantly reduces time spent collecting and searching for data; improves decisions by ensuring consistent and accurate data; and reduces the need for your employees to waste their valuable time maintaining spreadsheets and trying to collect this information manually across departments. All of that means a reduction in data errors and an increased focus on what really matters, all of which ultimately boosts your bottom line.
#3 Automate Crucial Activities
Every business, regardless of its industry, has a number of back-office activities — from accounting and sales to HR, CRM, and other tasks — that eat away at employee productivity. With an ERP system, you can say goodbye to these tedious tasks since the right ERP software will help your departments automate these jobs and streamline all of your crucial back-office tasks.
The result is that your employees enjoy an accurate, shared database without dealing with the time-consuming compilation, search, or maintenance of manual records. All the while, your employees will grow more effective in their roles while your organization as a whole gains real-time insight into how, and how efficiently, you’re operating. This automation saves time, money, and increases productivity across the board.
#4 Eliminate Redundancies
Prior to implementing an ERP system, most businesses will find that their departments naturally keep relevant data within a secluded environment, perhaps organized in a completely different manner than in other departments. We’ve already covered how an ERP system can help standardize data storage and open up accessibility across your organization, but this also comes with another major added benefit that should be highlighted accordingly.
That is, with consistent and shared databases, your organization will see a great reduction or even elimination in data repetition and errors. That means an ERP system helps to reduce confusion, remove inconsistencies, and make your data management that much more effective overall.
With all data stored in one place, there’s no need to worry about whether data is synchronized across databases or if you’re looking at the most recent information. ERP systems give everyone access to the same, most up-to-date info. That means no more repeated tasks, data errors, and even means a reduction in lost data thanks to scheduled backups and dependable cloud storage.
#5 Boost Efficiency and Efficacy
When considering implementing a new software, especially one as far-reaching as an ERP system, user adoption is certainly a primary concern for any business. Fortunately, the right ERP system like Multiview will pride itself on a user-friendly interface that makes getting around intuitive and easy, reducing the learning curve and reducing or eliminating the need for workplace training. Your employees will quickly adopt your new ERP software in favor of time savings and simplicity.
Meanwhile, this software makes reporting easier than ever, allowing for leaders and employees across departments to generate custom and standard reports for presentations, progress tracking, and more. All of this further contributes to improving your business’ overall efficiency and efficacy at every level.
#6 Enhance Visibility and Operational Control
Gaining complete control and visibility over your organization’s operations may seem like a pipe dream, but with the right technology, it’s entirely achievable. In fact, the ERP system you implement should be centered on unlocking this capability, giving your organization the power to analyze your historical and current data at any point in time with the most up-to-date, accurate, and complete information available by pulling from every single aspect and department of your business.
Your ERP’s real-time compilation of data will enable you to identify issues before they become major problems, allowing you to be proactive in seeking solutions, all the while helping you run a successful and profitable business by empowering you with an unmatched level of insight. No more guesswork or decision-making based on incomplete or outdated information.
#7 Improve Customer Experiences
Given all of the prior benefits you just read and how an ERP system will help you put better business practices into place, there’s no doubt that the right ERP software will trickle down to improve your customers’ experiences as well. By helping you maintain a transparent and efficient supply chain across your company, your customers will enjoy the likes of better communication; detailed order tracking; faster delivery; reduced service times; and so much more.
Ultimately, there are countless ways an ERP system will directly and indirectly impact and improve your customers’ experiences, but most of all, by empowering your teams with access to the right information, you’ll even be able to build stronger relations with faster, more accurate communication. What’s more, with better management of customer history and data that reveals buying patterns, your marketing tactics can be improved ten-fold.
The result? The right ERP system will improve your business all-around. Interested in seeing it for yourself? Here at Multiview, we help businesses like yours every day in their pursuit of improved profitability, productivity, and performance. We’ll show you how. Click here to sign up for a free demo of Multiview’s products.
