Business growth should be a good thing. But if you aren’t ready for it, your growing pains can escalate to the point of harming your business. Fast growth means bringing in new employees, increasing your business and warehouse locations, and adding a multitude of other changes. This expansion entails large expenditures, which can increase your debt and create cash flow problems. The increased demand for your products and services should take care of this, but only if you successfully scale your business.
Having the right ERP system in place will help with your scaling efforts in the following ways:
Integrate Your Business Systems and Departments
Quick adaptation to the demands of fast business growth requires effective communication and collaboration across all your departments. When the applications and databases of different departments don’t communicate, your ability to implement the changes required for growth is hampered.
Attempting to force such a company to react faster than its usual pace merely produces chaos. This isn’t surprising because poor system integration introduces unnecessary complexity in your operations. In extreme cases, it can cause paralysis when siloed data across your organisation doesn’t agree. How can you make informed business decisions with inconsistent data?
Automate Workflow
Manual work flow systems are slow and prone to errors. They are often associated with paper documents that get passed from one desk to the next. However, even if a company uses computers and software applications for order processing (for example), the workflow itself is manual if you rely on human beings to manually send their contributions on to the next person in a process.
An automated workflow immediately distributes information to those in need of it. As each person does their part, the automated system sends the updated information on to the next person or people. Workflow automation streamlines and keeps work processes moving along. It also gives management greater insight and control over work processes. Coping with fast growth requires a fast response to the demands of business. Workflow automation does this.
Keep Your Customers Satisfied
Managing the inventory of multiple warehouses can get difficult when you don’t have access to accurate real-time data. This is further complicated when you’re also managing multiple stores, both offline and online.
Customers today want immediate gratification and won’t wait for backordered items to arrive. Profitably keeping customers happy requires keeping your inventory efficiently stocked to meet demand without needlessly tying up money on overstocked items. An ERP system such as SAP Business One makes this possible.
Even when you aren’t experiencing fast business growth, SAP Business One will give you the competitive edge that will take your business to the next level, and will make your transition to greater success a smooth one. Contact us today for more information.
