Change isn’t easy for a lot of people, and since companies like yours are made up of people, it’s likely your organization is resistant to change, too.
Think about when your company started. There was a small team that worked together to meet goals. Each person called on their own experience and knowledge to create processes to accomplish tasks. As your company grew, those processes got passed on to new hires, who adapted and changed as the company evolved. Eventually, those processes became a hodgepodge of approaches tied together by a common goal — to get the job done.
Over time, those adapted processes can miss important components and lack efficiencies, but if they work, and they keep your workflows going, few people take time to adjust and try new strategies.
Or worse yet, someone suggests a “new” or “improved” way to do something, only to have the new method ultimately cause headaches and more work for your team, thereby decreasing the receptiveness to future changes.
When something seems to work, even if it’s not at peak efficiency, who has time to focus on change and improvements? Your team should, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Management (BPM) software can help.
ERP and BPM are game-changers for businesses of all sizes. That’s why there is a growing market for the technology — a market that’s expected to reach almost $80 billion by 2026.
ERP and BPM streamline and automate your work processes, and then align and integrate your key operational components into a single system — from sales and marketing, product planning and development, to billing and accounting, human resources, and much more.
Let’s look at some benefits of ERP and BMS, the behind-the-scenes tech that keep your business going:
1. Insight Into Your Big Picture for Business
If you’re managing your business operations with disparate systems, word-processing documents, and spreadsheets, you’re not able to quickly and accurately get instant insight into your comprehensive business picture. ERP and BMS can radically change how you make business decisions.
By integrating your core workflows and processes into a single platform, you can get instant visibility into all the core components of your operations so you can make better business decisions. In one study of small and medium size businesses (SMBs) that adopted an ERP solution, 48% said they had gained real-time visibility into all of their data.
Do you have audits or regulatory or compliance reporting mandates? ERP and BMS can help you quickly pull your needed information for review and analytics significantly faster than manual processes.
2. Increased Technical Security for Your Business
Disparate systems mean a lot of extra work for your IT and cybersecurity teams. Every software program and application needs to be assessed and protected for vulnerabilities. There are lots of product updates to do and related equipment to track. By using a single platform for business management, you remove some of the work from your IT team so they have fewer applications to manage and protect, which decreases your cybersecurity risks of hacking or exploitation overall.
You can further decrease your organization’s cyber risk by adopting a cloud-based ERP or BMS solution. Moving to the cloud reduces the number of on-premise requirements for your operational workflows and processes, further freeing up resources for your IT team.
3. Improved Efficiencies and Time Saved
Those hodgepodge processes your organization likely uses on a daily basis? They’re probably not that efficient. Oftentimes your team does repetitive manual tasks, like duplicating data into multiple systems or spreadsheets across your organizations. ERM and BMS software means you can enter data once and have it accessible across all of your work processes—from marketing to sales and from manufacturing to product delivery, billing, and payment management. This means improved efficiencies across your organization, time saved for your staff, and ultimately happier employees who don’t feel bogged down by unnecessary tasks.
In the ERP study we mentioned earlier, 77% said they were able to standardize their back-office processes compared to 22% without an ERP, and these businesses experienced almost a 40% decrease in the time it takes for them to make business decisions.
4. Workflows With Standard Operating Procedures
Most operations rely more on people than processes to get the job done. That comes with a lot of inefficiencies. The way one employee does a task on one shift may be completely different than the way another employee does the same task on a different shift. Add that up for all of your employees and all the tasks that have to be accomplished within your organization and before you know it, you have slow, inefficient processes that are prone to human error.
ERP and BMS software allows you to standardize processes — and in many cases automate them — based on your company’s best practices. Not only will that speed tasks up, but it also reduces the opportunity for humans to make errors, further making your processes more reliable and more efficient.
5. Cost savings
ERP and BMS platforms can create significant cost savings for your organization. We mentioned earlier that cloud-hosted platforms can improve your cybersecurity stature. Cloud solutions can also save you money, increase your organizational flexibility, and create opportunities for scalability as your organization grows and changes. Cloud solutions can also help you adopt more robust ERP and BMS platforms that your small teams may otherwise have difficulty maintaining.
But beyond the cloud, these systems can bring other cost saving measures to your organization by eliminating unnecessary software, freeing up staff time, and automating manual tasks. On average, organizations with an ERP can experience about 11% reduction in operational costs and are four times more likely to be able to forecast and plan for future demand.
6. Collaboration Across Departments
One often overlooked benefit of adopting an ERP or BMS solution is the unity it can bring to your workforce. Instead of having disparate systems that aren’t accessible by the masses, your BMS can give the right people the right insight into your operations, no matter where they are. This insight – especially those configurable dashboard and reports — give everyone a clear picture of how well your business is doing, where there are gaps, and where you can make improvements.
Are you ready to increase the speed and accuracy of your daily operations? Join an aACE webinar today to find out how you can seamlessly integrate your sales, operations, and accounting into one easy-to-use solution. Start promoting better collaboration across your entire organization, improve efficiencies and ultimately grow your bottom line.
