It’s taking longer and longer to reconcile financials at the top of the month. Your sales forecasts are based more on guesswork than solid figures. Your business has trouble maintaining its order volume and customer satisfaction is faltering as a result. you’ve got no idea what proportion inventory you’ve got in your warehouse, and it is a pain to seek out out. If this seems like your business—or on the brink of it—then it’s going to be time to think about an ERP system.

Because every company is exclusive, there is no single indicator that says, “You need ERP now!” However, the businesses that might benefit most from ERP software often face similar problems and frustrations. Is your business facing a number of these same issues? Read on to get the highest five signs that your company is prepared for ERP.

1:you’ve got much Different Software for various Processes

Spend a couple of minutes brooding about how employees at your company record, track, and process information. Do accounting staff use one system for receivables and payables, and sales use another to enter in customer orders? is that the process of taking those orders and getting them fulfilled and into accounting a time-sucking manual process? Do employees in your warehouse use a totally different solution to track shipping and receiving?

When various front- and back-end systems run separately, it can wreak havoc on the processes that are meant to make sure your company is running smoothly. Without accurate data from sales, inventory management may suffer, while not having the newest information from accounting can trigger a ripple effect on everything from marketing budgets to payroll.

ERP software integrates these systems in order that every business function relies on one database. With one source of data that contains accurate, real-time data, an ERP solution breaks up information logjams, helps staff make better decisions more quickly,

and frees up their time to figure on more high-value exercises like helping the business grow even faster.

2: you do not Have quick access to Information About Your Business

If someone asked you what your average sales margin is, how long wouldn’t it take you to seek out? What about other key performance metrics, like orders per day or sales to date? For companies that believe siloed systems and spreadsheets that require to be constantly updated and reconciled manually, it might be an extended wait.

The pace of business is quicker than ever before, which suggests employees across your company need immediate access to key data. With an ERP solution, executives can get a holistic view of business operations at any time, while other staff can get the knowledge they have to try to do their jobs more effectively. for instance, sales representatives should be ready to view a customer’s full transaction history and more proactively improve renewal rates while increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

3: Accounting Takes Longer and Is harder

Often, the primary noticeable signs that your company needs ERP software will come from your finance department. If your employees believe paper-based invoices and sales orders—and spend hours hebdomadally manually entering them into different accounting and sales systems—you got to consider what proportion of time is being wasted on tasks that ERP software can handle in a moment.

The same goes for financial reporting—if it takes ages to consolidate or reconcile financial information across systems and thru countless spreadsheets, an ERP solution can make a big impact. With all financials during a single database, accounting staff won’t need to spend hours cross-posting information, rekeying numbers, or reconciling data manually. Your accounting staff are going to be more productive, freeing them to deliver critical reports without delays and frustration.

4: Sales and therefore the Customer Experience Are Suffering

As companies grow, one of their biggest challenges is usually inventory management. Ensuring that the proper amount of products is within the right location at the proper time may be a vital part of business operations.

When sales, inventory, and customer data are maintained separately, it can create serious problems across your company. If you run out of a well-liked product, sales are going to be off until subsequent shipment arrives. Meanwhile, if a customer calls to inquire about an order and employees can’t track it to ascertain if it has been shipped—or if it’s even in stock—your company will start to develop a poor reputation for reliability and repair.

With an ERP system, on the opposite hand, staff in every department will have access to equivalent , up-to-the-minute information. Customer-facing reps should be ready to answer customers’ questions on order and shipping status, payment status, service issues, etc., without having to hold up the phone and ask another department. Better yet, customers should be ready to simply go browsing to their account and consider status information. Meanwhile, the warehouse manager can see that stock is getting low and may reorder.

5: Your it’s Too Complex and Time-Consuming

One of the most important downsides of getting multiple systems across your business is that IT management can become a nightmare. Customizing these systems, integrating them, and maintaining them with patches and upgrades are often complex, costly, and sap critical time and resources.

If your patchwork of systems includes on-premise, legacy business software, system upgrades are often more trouble than they’re worth. Not only are these updates expensive and time-consuming, but they’ll also undo customizations implemented by IT staff. as long as, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of mid-size businesses are running outdated versions of their business software.1

Rather than adding more software—and complexity—to an already ineffective system, ERP technology can offer you the agility to reply to changing business needs rapidly. That’s why selecting a cloud-based ERP provider like NetSuite is critical. With NetSuite, system updates are not any longer a problem , and new functions are easy to feature as your business grows and changes.