Welp MagazineEnterprise resource planning is the difference between proactive assurances across your company and reactive backpedaling to fix things. In essence, your company is nothing more than the sum total of your resources. Your resources could include things like raw materials, staff, and skills and training.
Whatever you produce, from highly competitive goods to the most searched for services in your trade, a robust ERP platform by Sage.com, for example, can help you to put together the jigsaw that is your company, giving you all the information you need – in real-time – to make big business decisions. Make sense? Let’s take a closer look.
Procurement & manufacturing
When we begin to look into ERP, we must first break your company down into its many constituent parts. Take procurement, for example. If your current systems for procurement involve nothing more than a phone call from a shop-floor team leader, informing you that you’re running low on a particular raw material, you are far from ahead of the game. Likewise, when it comes to manufacturing, the machinery and dispatch services you deploy are all resources that can go wrong – what is your current solution for tracking how things are going?
ERP software tracks all aspects of your firm. From the raw materials to the company you employ to transport your manufactured goods to their place of sale, everything is accountable with all details made available to you in an instant.
Sales and aftercare
How are your sales doing this quarter? Do you know who is buying your goods or services? Do you have a developed understanding of the buyer personas that gravitate towards your brand? What about things like the channels they use to interact with your online services? Are your demographics appreciated down to the letter, with marketing materials designed and presented in ways that resonate with them?
Sales and aftercare are huge elements of ERP that can mean the difference between an OK fiscal year and a life-changing fiscal year. Uncover the information you need with systems developed to help you get ahead. The resources you deviate to customer engagement and aftercare can be monitored, tracked, and improved. If you’re staying up late and burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to increase your market share, ERP solutions can help.
Staff training
Your HR staff can benefit in many ways from the adoption of ERP software. Not only can the suite of complementary and integrated technologies shine a light on the exact nature of your current business practices (both good and bad), but it can help to highlight where teams or under or over-perform. On a more granular level, the software can also help your HR department to monitor individual staff performance.
When you know who is performing and who needs help, you can roll out training and development opportunities that benefit your staff and ultimately the company as a whole. Take the time now to get up to speed with ERP, or miss out on company-wide improvements.
