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We’ve spoken before about how businesses (and small businesses, specifically) can benefit from ERP software.

An ERP can help your business get organized, simplify accounting, improve your customer experience, make better decisions, and scale faster — things any business would agree are, well, good for business!

But there's a catch: these benefits can only be enjoyed if your ERP software is properly implemented into your current stack. You’ll need a keen understanding of your organization’s business operations and workflow. Do it right and you’ll experience unprecedented growth by gaining enhanced data and insight into your operations. Do it wrong and you’ll just waste your time and money.

Here are a few things to keep in mind so you can avoid such a disaster.

Do This:

ERP implementation might seem like a simple process. After all, some solutions promise that all you might have to do is download the application and voilà — you’re off and running with enhanced data.

Not so fast, my friend!

Proper implementation involves selecting, buying, and installing your ERP system. This includes training your team on how to utilize the new system as well as adapting to any workflow changes it may cause.

Of course, the hope is that your ERP software will make life easier and better for your entire team and workflow, but there’s a bit of a learning curve.

That’s because ERP software implementation is an ongoing process, not a “one and done” type deal. Your data must be nurtured, monitored, and studied for it to be a powerful tool.

That being said, here are a few things you can (and should) do to ensure success.

Do Your Homework

Don’t choose the first vendor you land on. Make sure to do your research in the competitive software vendor landscape to find the partner that best suits the unique needs of your business. No vendor is one-size-fits-all, though some may claim to be!

Train Your Team

From your project managers to key stakeholders and even your users, everyone that has touchpoints in your new ERP software must be trained on how to use the system. When everyone understands the data, you can harness its power.

Migrate Your Data Into The New Database

Map, correct, and verify all of your data. Running off an incomplete database would defeat the purpose of your ERP and could render the system useless. You may have to pull data from several different digital libraries, but putting it all in one central location will be well worth the effort.

Test It Out

You did the vetting and training, now it’s time to put your system and team to the test. Ensure the quality of your ERP software by making sure regular employees are able to run through real scenarios that could have a big impact on your business operations. Here you can identify potential problems and make changes before the system goes live.

Create Employee Buy-In

You can expect to run into some team members who may be less than pleased with change. But you can help them open up and buy into the idea of ERP software by incentivizing training and implementation. Let them voice concerns and frustrations and help make things as smooth as possible. Measure performance and reward results. This gets everyone on board and puts an honest effort forward.

Avoid These Pitfalls:

Of course, doing things right also means avoiding costly mistakes. Here are a few common pitfalls to avoid.

Cutting Corners

It’s tempting to look for the easy route, but the path of least resistance isn’t the best option here. Properly implementing ERP software takes time and money — there’s just no way around it. Here, focus on the potential gains in the long run over short-term returns. This is the path to sustained success.

Getting More Than You Need

All ERP software is not created equal, which is why we mentioned above how critical it is to choose the right vendor partner. Many may have features you don’t need or even purposely try to sell you those features to make more money off of you. These are partners to avoid. Take the time to find a vendor who has your best interests in mind — your success is their success, after all!

Not Fully Integrating Your Business Processes

Your system won’t succeed if you only go in halfway. It takes a full commitment to ERP software to achieve success. From your C-Suite to your end-users, everyone needs to buy into your ERP system. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the software from the top down and you’ll see the results.

See If aACE Is The ERP Software You Need

If you want to find a great ERP software partner, aACE is a great place to start. aACE offers not just ERP, but also accounting and CRM support for a full suite to optimize your workplace. Want to see what ERP software and aACE can do for your business? Get in touch with us today.

"aACE has created straight-forward interaction between departments and gives us a faster and more accurate picture of everything that goes on." - Theodore Fotopulous, Operations Manager, Raydoor Inc.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your business could manage all of its important data in one, centralized location?

You can! All you need is an Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP solution. Let’s walk you through what it is and how it can benefit your business.

What Is ERP?

ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, is software that helps your business manage its back-end processes. From finance to accounting, supply chains and inventory, and even tasks like scheduling, an ERP is a centralized program that can handle all of the essential functions that make your business run.

ERP software keeps all of your organization’s crucial data in one safe, organized, and accessible place. With an ERP in place, your organization only needs one program to keep track of all of the moving parts. Nothing will get lost in a spreadsheet. The ERP gives you a complete picture of your day-to-day operations.

What Can An ERP Do For Your Business?

In short, a lot! An ERP is a powerful business management software that can give you a 360º view of your business. An ERP can seamlessly integrate sales, operations, accounting, and more, to save your team valuable time.

ERP software can increase the speed and accuracy of your daily operations in one convenient solution. You’ll easily share information between departments without duplicate data entry, boost your efficiency, and impact your business where it matters — your bottom line.

Benefits Of An ERP Solution

Let’s break down a few of the benefits of an ERP:

1. A Single Database For Every System

Your accounting, your sales, and your operations, all in one place. Don’t waste time tracking down your departments for numbers. Keep it all there in one place where you all have access to accurate, up-to-date information. Your ERP solution can break up information logjams, help your team make better decisions faster, and let them get back to work on more high-value priorities like growing your business.

2. Simplified Accounting

Accounting tasks that traditionally take hours can be handled in an instant by ERP software. No longer does your accounting staff need to waste time consolidating financial information across your systems through numerous spreadsheets. Your ERP will store all of your financials in a single database, ensuring your accounting staff never needs to cross-post information or manually reconcile data again.

3. Improved Customer Experience

Managing your sales, inventory, and customer data separately can create problems across your company. It can also cause a poor customer experience. The last thing you want to do is develop a reputation for poor reliability and service.

An ERP gives all of your staff access to the same, real-time data, helping customer-facing reps answer questions about order and shipping status, payment status, service issues, and more, without having to put anyone on hold.

4. Make Better Decisions

When your organization has real-time data to work with, you’ll be able to make difficult decisions faster and easier. The up-to-date data also ensures you’re making the best possible decision, whereas a company without an ERP won’t have the same advantage. The ability to remain agile and respond to changes in your business environment is an incredibly powerful tool.

5. Scale Faster

An ERP system makes your business more flexible and functional, which can lead to scalability and growth. Armed with improved data clarity, your staff can shift their attention to manage the increasing volume of business while your ERP handles the dirty work of data. Your ERP helps you manage growth without ever feeling disorganized or overwhelmed.

Summary

When you have an ERP that seamlessly integrates with your business, sales, and accounting operations, all in a centralized location, you’re sure to see improvements to your business workflow. When manual data tasks are removed, your team can focus on customer relationships, scalability, and growth.

If you’re ready to see what ERP software can do for your business, check out our feature highlights.

"Having aACE in place will eliminate the necessity to run our business off of Excel spreadsheets, eliminate the majority of human error when making calculations, eliminate recreating-the-wheel every time we have a repetitive process come up in the course of our business, and, most importantly, it will allow my team to concentrate on building our business instead of just trying to keep up with it." –Jasmine Crandall, Midwest Custom Bottling

If your business involves manufacturing and warehousing capabilities, you understand just how many individual parts must align at the right time in the right place to meet your peak operational efficiency goals and keep your customers happy.

One missed product order, one late shipment, or one missed invoice and your business can slow or come to a complete halt. Warehouse management automation through business management software (BMS) can decrease the likelihood of these errors and give you full insight into all your operations at any point in time.

Unfortunately, for many small and medium size businesses, many critical operational functions are still handled by disparate systems and sometimes even paper manifests facilitated by memory, paper calendar reminders, manual phone orders, and spreadsheets that are hundreds — or even thousands — of cells deep. Who can keep up?

These disparate and patchworked systems may work some of the time, but they’re time-consuming and often don’t provide complete or instant insight into your overall operations.

A BMS platform with shipping and receiving tools can remove the frustration and headaches of processes that have been hodge-podged together over time.

aACE’s shipping and receiving tools enable manufacturing and warehouse operators to improve efficiencies by managing all of their core operations in a single cross-platform solution. You can quickly get real-time insight into all of your inventory, fulfill orders, receive payments, and get alerts about all your processes from a single, easy-to-use solution.

Here are 5 ways aACE can help you streamline and automate tasks within your warehouse management system to improve operational efficiencies:

1. Inventory Management

If you’re still using manual processes for your manufacturing and warehousing operations, this might look familiar to you. A team member notices you’re running low on a product or supply. The employee logs in online or places a call for a reorder. You always get a specific number of that product and generally have a good idea of how long that will last you. The order is made and then sometime later a truck pulls up to your warehouse loaded with boxes of products or supplies.

When that shipment comes in, an employee receives the order. That employee may or may not know you’re expecting a delivery. Nonetheless, the driver and your employee exchange paperwork. The boxes are unloaded, and team members get busy counting and accounting for the shipment. Numbers and information are written down or put into a spreadsheet. Those boxes are then routed to another location in your facility where they’re stored until needed.

But what if the order was over-estimated and you have no room for all the extra goods that just came in? Or what if the employee who placed the order didn’t realize your team recently relocated that product to another section of your warehouse and you weren’t actually running low at all?

Now you have twice the product on the floor than you actually need and processes are slowed while everyone works together to try to figure out where to store the excess and how to manage the possible expenditure misstep.

This process is inefficient, tedious, and time-consuming. What if you could free up your employees resources here so their time could be put to use for more valuable tasks?

aACE’s built-in inventory management software (IMS) can speed up these processes with streamlined steps and automation, while supporting you with better insight and tracking.

For example, IMS gives you constant insight into your inventory. You can forecast inventory requirements based on your existing business processes and orders. It knows just how much inventory you need and when, and can help you save money with freight management tools.

2. Automated Shipments and Product Selection

Your warehouses are busy places. You have inventory constantly on the move. From supplies and products coming in to orders going out, if you’re using manual processes to track everything, it’s a juggling act — and it’s easy to drop the ball.

Automated shipping records will help your team always know which shipments are coming in and going out so no one is caught off guard.

You can even use aACE’s Pick App with barcode scanning to make sure that every product selected is the right one, every time.

3. eCommerce, Order Management, and Shipping

Product demand drives your inventory processes, so while you’re streamlining efficiencies within your warehouse, you can also streamline and automate many of your sales order processes.

An order management tool can help your team take orders from start to finish — while giving everyone complete insight into what’s happening without having to duplicate order entries in multiple places throughout your business.

aACE’s order management engine automates order entries, including full integrations with the industry’s most popular eCommerce tools. Your team members can easily take payments with point-of-sale payment processing and can even automate payments based on system events like when a deposit is needed, when goods are shipped, or other specifications tailored to your business processes.

The order management system can even automatically handle sales and use tax calculations, as well as credit management tools, and auto-generated purchase orders and invoices that are integrated with your regular accounting processes.

If a payment fails, aACE’s notification system will alert you via email and/or text messages before a product leaves your building — so you can easily follow-up and confirm payment before your shipment heads out the door.

And stop wasting time calling for couriers or waiting for an outgoing shipment pickup. With integrated NRG and ReadyShipper, you can streamline your packing and shipping processes, including support for major carriers like FedEx, USPS, UPS, and other LTL carriers.

4. Tracking and Statements

Remember that scenario we shared earlier with the tedious inventory management and manual supply tracking? Shipping and receiving software can eliminate some of that strain. With purchase order next-step tracking, you will always be aware of which supplies your team ordered and when those products will arrive. This means your team is always ready to receive new shipments.

Your purchasing and production team members can even receive instant notifications to let them know when incoming shipments have been received. That way they can speed up inspections, adjust for returns, and request re-shipments as needed. No more paper manifests and drowning in spreadsheets or repeating manual data entry across multiple work groups.

5. Calendar and Scheduling

The most efficient warehouse and manufacturing operations have comprehensive insight into all of the moving components of their operations.

Calendar and scheduling tools integrated into your business management software can help you get instant insight into everything happening across your operations. From leads, to purchase orders, to shipments and inventories, you can see calendar displays with all important related dates.

Best yet, those calendar events are linked to corresponding records, meaning you can drill down into more details with a single click within the calendar view, including insight into past events.

If your calendar is full, and we hope it is, you can filter your views by customer, job, teams, and resources — whatever you need to get a better picture of the important events that affect your operations. You can even color-code the events so you can easily see which events need immediate action and which are good to go.

The aACE+ DayBack calendar is also great for project management because you can switch to a Gantt-style view to see related events up to nine weeks out. And with drag-and-drop rescheduling, it’s easy to move things around to reschedule with related records.

Save Time, Money, and Resources with BSM

aACE clients say business management software saves them hundreds of hours of labor every month and the software is a critical to business success, including growth in annual revenue and more insight into business operational efficiencies.

Put down the paper and stop wasting time with tedious manual process. Register for an aACE webinar today to learn more about how its software can help you streamline your warehouse and manufacturing processes so you can focus more on tasks that improve customer service and add to your bottom line.

"I can say that using aACE actually helped us learn how to do business more professionally." - Jim Parker, President and Owner, Vacutherm Inc.

Imagine if your favorite team (might be the Jayhawks, might not) decided to play without a plan. Just everyone jump in there and do whatever seems best. They might make a fairly good showing in a pick-up game down at the park. After all, they've spent a lot of time developing their expertise. The real question: how would they fare against another team just as skilled, but operating on a unified approach to the game? Say goodbye to that trophy.

Now let's talk about ERP.

Enterprise resource planning software is the play diagram, whiteboard, film study, and running laps all rolled into one. As discussed on Business-Software.com, ERP is vital for efficiency. And efficiency in your operations will help you accelerate past competitors.

Here are four prime benefits that any small or medium-sized business can gain from a quality ERP system:

Freeing Up Your Staff

Leverage your computer systems to track the details they do best. A machine can track transactions from quote to cash and manage inventory counts like a pro. This liberates time for your people to focus on more complex, more valuable efforts. This amounts to getting the benefit of a new hire without the hassle and expense of hiring. Or drafting another player, to go back to our analogy. So why run laps if you can run plays?

Unified Coordination

A solid game plan makes such a big difference because business is a team sport. Maybe a tennis player and golfer can just give it the old college try and succeed. Or maybe you've got a star player wearing #23, but as your company grows, the impact an individual has on the business shrinks. It becomes more and more valuable for groups to work as a cohesive unit. This kind of coordination is always a challenge, so you don't want to complicate things more by not letting the team know where things stand. More on this in a second.

Data Accuracy

It's becoming a cliche that big data is a game-changer. But no matter how much information you have at your fingertips, if it isn't accurate, it won't help much. A quality ERP system will integrate all your data, making sure that the folks in accounting have a picture that is consistent with what the sales department and the warehouse staff see. Your customers can have a clear understanding as well, which is something they are growing to expect in the e-commerce context.

Company Insight and Agility

The thing about 'big data' is that size is relative. Even a local manufacturing company can benefit from seeing the big picture of the company. You don't need terabytes of data before you can start finding patterns in your operations. A quality ERP system will help you monitor progress towards your company goals and spot emerging trends. These future-facing abilities are exactly what you need to take your game up to the next division. And the best software packages will grow with your company, maximizing the ROI.

As an entrepreneur, you need to think like a coach, addressing multiple levels of operations―from individual players' performance to coordinating plays between departments to monitoring progress through the entire season. Make sure you've got the tools you need to help your team succeed.

A Quality ERP System

"aACE has helped us streamline many of our processes. We have a snapshot of each project with many of the important details being on one screen. We instantly see our profitability within our projects and have specific numbers or data regarding many aspects of our business."

-Lili Hall, President, KNOCK

For more information, contact us today.

Tired of using spreadsheets for your accounting tasks? Sometimes they can have hundreds — if not thousands — of fields where one misstep or mistyped number can send you into a tailspin wondering where you went wrong and how you can reconcile it.

Or maybe you’re frustrated by having all of your accounting functions tied to an older proprietary system that silos data and requires you to manually input or import data you already use elsewhere so you can balance your books.

Accounting is serious business and it’s a core task you should handle with confidence and ease — without worrying about potential errors caused by repeated manual data entries across multiple systems within your company.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for accounting can revolutionize the way you access, use and calculate data within your organization for more fiscal responsibility and greater accountability.

Here are a few ways you can use ERP software for accounting so you can focus more on growing your business and less on repeated manual data entries:

All your core data in a single dashboard

There are a lot of moving pieces and parts that go into fiscal accountability. From the costs of supplies and manpower to manufacturing fees and other services, a quality ERP should integrate into most, if not all, of your core operational systems and processes to ensure your team can always access accurate data when you need it.

An ERP can also decrease human error and standardize processes to ensure you have fewer mistakes — and therefore more financial accuracy — for your business.

With a single dashboard, your ERP software can give you instant visibility into all the numbers that keep your business thriving, and in so doing, can help reduce opportunities for fraud or misuse, including user access privileges so you can see who has access to your data and accounts and what they’re doing with them, in near real time.

Integrations for sales, operations and accounting

If your organization hasn’t adopted an ERP to help streamline your operations, you may be frustrated by siloed information that’s entered into one program, for example your sales system, yet never makes it to your accounting system.

Or maybe your accounting solution gets an update with accurate, current prices and information, but your sales solution doesn’t. It’s a flawed system that can mean when it’s time to balance your books, your numbers don’t match up and you have to dedicate valuable time and resources to uncovering discrepancies so you can make sure everything balances in the end.

A quality ERP solution should offer seamless integrations for your existing sales and operational systems into accounting so you can follow your business from sales lead to closed deal and final payment.

Let’s look at this quick example for a hypothetical company:

• A member of your sales team is ready to connect with a sales lead that your marketing team educated and nurtured to the point of a likely product sale.
• Your sales rep can use your ERP, which also integrates into your marketing CRM and CMS platforms, to access the lead’s contact information, find out which product the lead is most interested in, and then quickly and accurately determine cost estimates and review pricing structure. The information the sales rep uses at this stage is the same information available simultaneously for your operations and accounting teams.
• Your sales rep closes the deal! The rep processes the order with an invoice.
• Your new customer pays for the product.
• Your operations team gets instant notification of a new product order and can also see other pending orders.
• Your ERP can help manage product shipping and receiving, again sharing related and valuable information with your accounting team.
• Your team can also use your ERP to track orders, review sales notes, and follow your product through delivery and sales rep follow-up.
• When the process is complete, you can even automate sales commissions and link them directly to product delivery and payments.

Task automation

Looking again at our fictional company and the great job your sales team member did to close a deal, you can also automate a number of tasks directly related to sales and accounting.

Here are a few examples:

• Your sales rep is ready to create an invoice to obtain product payment. There are likely a number of parameters for accounting your sales rep should include in this process. Your ERP can automate and standardize these tasks; for example, it can address whether or not this deal requires a purchase order (PO) number, if the client has any credit limits or concerns, if the customer qualifies for any discounts, and handle any relevant tax information.
• If there are issues, your accounting team can instantly share that information with your sales team for customer follow up.
• Your sales team can even make cost estimates based off most recent purchasing activity to ensure the information your accounting team sees is accurate.

Here are some other accounting tasks an ERP can automate so you can save time and free up your staff to focus on more pressing issues:

• Generate invoices
• Progress billing
• Subscription information
• Services rendered
• Purchase orders
• Close orders when products are delivered and payment received
• Stopping product delivery if there is a payment issue
• Set up and run recurring transactions based either on a timeline or specified amount

Multiple locations, multiple departments, multiple budgets

If your organization has multiple departments, it’s likely you have to manage and account for a variety of budget types. With an ERP, you can immediately access, track, and change budget-related information, not just departmentally, but even across multiple locations or entities within your operations. You can also use your ERP to plan for, manage, and maintain budgets for multiple product lines or business units within our organization — all within one platform.

Payment integrations

Tired of repeatedly inputting the same payment information into multiple systems within your company? A good ERP solution should also include fully integrated payment processing. Look for a solution that is PCI compliant for credit cards, debit cards, and ACH payment processing.

Reports and analytics

Whether you’re conducting an internal audit or you’re required to meet mandated compliance and regulation audits, ERP makes preparing for audits a breeze. Your ERP should help your team access the data you need quickly and generate reports and other analytics that make it easy for you to communicate information in a digestible format for all your key stakeholders. Your ERP should come with great out-of-the box reports, but also offer customizations that your team can configure to meet all of your key needs.

Increased visibility

Your ERP should be a true quote-to-cash solution that increases visibility into your organization’s financial health — from the big picture down to a granular level — so you can save time, reduce errors, and have accurate insight into the financial components of your operations at all times.

Are you ready to see how aACE’s ERP solution for accounting can help you with intuitive reporting, budget forecasting, sales tax calculation, payment processing and a whole lot more? Join us for an upcoming webinar to see aACE in action.

“[I would recommend aACE to] any company that needs a seemingly impossible-to-achieve customized accounting system that will take them from inputting a transaction to the general ledger." - Wendy Donenfield, CPA and Controller, M & R International

As companies evaluate ways to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs while better meeting customer needs and organizational goals, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools are increasingly valuable investments for businesses of all sizes.

By streamlining multiple disparate systems into one easy-to-use platform, ERPs connect business processes so data and information can be quickly and easily shared and analyzed to help organizations make better business decisions.

ERP adoption and implementation can be expensive. Depending on the number of applications you need, the number of users who access your system, and the amount of customization you require, on average businesses invest more than $1 million in a new ERP system.

So what would motivate a company to invest that much capital in a new business process management system?

The savings.

For example, one study finds that on average an ERP can reduce overall operational costs by 23% and administrative costs by 22%. That’s a significant saving over time. And while operational savings may be a driving factor to explore ERP adoption, quality ERP programs can do more than just save money.

Did you know that 95% of businesses say they have major operational improvements after implementing an ERP? The improvements include reducing process times, increasing collaboration and centralizing data.

Before we take a deeper dive into ERP cost-savings, let’s take a quick look at some questions you should ask when considering if an ERP is right for your company, if it’s within your budget, and if, once implemented, its improvements and efficiencies will add up to significant cost-, time-, and resource-savings:

• First, what do you anticipate your up-front costs to be?
• Have you completed a comprehensive analysis of your existing business processes?
• Have you aligned your vendor selection process with the requirements list you compiled after reviewing your business processes?
• Have you worked closely with your selected vendor to analyze budget-related obstacles? According to an ERP study by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), 65% of ERP implementations go over budget.
• Have you determined if an on-premise or cloud-hosted ERP best meets your needs?
• Have you determined the total number of applications and services you’ll need included in your ERP?
• Have you determined how many users will need to access your system?
• Have you selected an ERP that will work for you out-of-the-box or do you need additional customizations to meet your business needs? Remember that with most vendors, the more customizations you require, the higher your implementation costs may be.
• Have you determined which types of customizations you need and how complex they may be?

Once you’ve evaluated and determined your up-front costs, let’s look at ways an ERP can decrease operational expenses and promote longer-term organizational growth.

Here are 6 ways an ERP can save your business time and money:

1. ERPs cut operational costs and improve efficiencies

ERPs integrate core business processes. An ERP eliminates the need for disparate systems across departments and geolocations, and instead centralizes and integrates these functions into a single system. The goal is to streamline processes and improve information exchanges across an entire organization, no matter how large or small.

Essentially, this means more work can be done (with automation) using less time and resources as well as fewer people. Ultimately, that leads to fewer operational costs overall and sets your business on a path toward growth.

2. Improved communication and data exchange with better collaboration

Post-ERP adoption, most organizations experience an easier exchange of business information that is facilitated by a simpler flow of knowledge, information, and data throughout departments. This means business transactions throughout the organization are visible to key stakeholders in near real time.

As automation helps reduce errors and remove factors caused by people-based processes, (think…. "Oops! I left that document on my desk!"), ERPs help improve data information exchanges with more accuracy, which in turns means decision-makers can make better, more timely business decisions. Automation also leads to improved employee satisfaction by reducing frustration and increasing employee productivity.

As information exchange is made easier and organizational-wide communication improves, company-wide silos are often broken down and employees tend to be happier, further bolstering morale and productivity outcomes.

3. Centralized business functions and decreased process times

ERPs are designed to be easy-to-use systems that unify, standardize, and automate business processes—everything from customer service, to accounting, to inventory and supply chain management, to invoicing and payment, and everything in between.

ERPs help eliminate duplicate processes and save time. Gone are the days where, over time, a singular process is changed and modified by various employees to the point where it no longer resembles its initial intent and where one or two key employees hold the knowledge keys that, without them, could immediately thwart or halt operations.

A well-designed ERP will centralize your business functions and promote more timely and efficient daily operations.

Think about invoicing. With an ERP, standardized processes — including notifications and alerts to key team members — means the sooner you can get your invoices out, the sooner you can get paid. ERPs also help ensure that every employee follows the same processes, ensuring consistency across your operations for recurring tasks.

Also, it’s key here to point out that good ERPs will give you access to analytics and dashboards that will help you monitor processes and workflows and enable you to give thoughtful feedback to teams for improvements while keeping key stakeholders informed.

4. Inventory and Supply Chain Management

Manufacturing companies are leading the way for ERP adoption, but regardless of your business type, you can benefit from ERP efficiencies. One way is getting a more comprehensive look into your supply chain and better understanding the scope of your inventory.

Whether you need insight into ordering, refilling, or reviewing supply needs, an ERP can help align your product inventory with your customers’ current and future needs.

A quality ERP can help you decrease product shortages, proactively address supply chain gaps, and better budget for inventory volumes while decreasing unnecessary spending and purchases for items that may remain in long-term (thus unused) storage facilities.

ERPs help you better analyze spending and purchases over time so you can more accurately determine your inventory needs, including tracking, waste analytics, damage assessments, and evaluations of products that are no longer essential to your current business needs.

5. Improved customer relationship management (CRM)

Not only does an ERP move multiple business processes into a single platform, it can also align your customer relationship management (CRM) database into the same system, giving you comprehensive insight into your customers’ needs no matter where they may be in the buyers’ journey.

The best ERPs help organizations align all of their customer records into a single database. This unified records system gives companies the ability to track all of their customer interactions — everything from an email or phone call, to an order, invoicing, payment receipt, and customer feedback.

ERPs help you align your customer interactions and company communications into one dashboard allowing all stakeholders to immediately have insight to address customer needs. This creates a unique opportunity to improve your customer service and target communications specifically to your buyers based on predetermined categorizations established by your business goals and objectives. These targeted customer segments mean you can get the right message to the right customers at the right time and often removes manual processes, thereby facilitating more timely and accurate engagements with customer needs. These ERP improvements also give you the ability to quantify return-on-investment for customer satisfaction and interaction with your organization.

6. Less IT costs and reduced labor burdens

Earlier, we mentioned how ERPs help with centralizing business processes. A related time and cost-saving factor is specifically related to IT costs.

With disparate systems, IT teams must invest a lot of time and resources into maintenance costs, maintenance time, and direct or indirect labor costs involved with new software purchases, updating existing systems, follow-through on licensing agreements, and training. These older approaches to business systems often negate the option for scalability, especially when it comes to time and expenses.

ERPs remove the need to have different programs for different departmental functions, which are often more complicated and more costly the larger an organization is. ERPs help decrease additional spending on software and hardware systems and eliminate the need for routine workflow disruptions when those systems have to be updated, patched, or replaced.

ERPs: Worth the Investment

On average, it takes a small or medium sized business (SMB) about 11 months after go-live to experience the full benefits of ERP adoption. For larger businesses it’s a little faster, often about seven months.

When it comes to business process change management, that can seem like a quick turnaround, but for organizations that successfully adopt and implement an ERP, the overall operational efficiencies, improved customer service, opportunities for growth, and happier employees sometimes outweigh numbers on a spreadsheet.

Are you interested in increasing the speed and accuracy of your daily operations, with significant potential to save time, money, and resources? Register for a webinar today to learn how aACE can help you seamlessly integrate your sales, operations, and accounting systems into one, powerful, easy-to-use system.

"aACE helped us to bring all of our company functions together into one system. This has helped us with automating reporting and avoiding the need for extra cross-checking among systems." - Lance Caffrey, EVP Operations, American Christmas