In our ‘Growing Business Guide’ for small & midsized businesses (SMBs), we shed light on ERP. We reveal what it is, what it does and how your growing business can benefit from it.
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning is a software system that helps you manage distinct business functions such as; financials, supply chain, manufacturing and operations. It’s designed to integrate all of these functions centrally into one system, to help your business run smoothly.
Here are some of its key features:
Integrates and enhances business processes
ERP integrates your disparate business processes, ensuring coherence and avoiding duplication across different parts of your business. With ERP you can gain control over your assets, cash flow and accounting, track orders and billings better, and deliver better customer service.
Improves collaboration through centralising data
ERP centralises data within your business. It combines data into a single, integrated solution that runs off a single database. This helps departments within your business readily share information and work closely with each other.
For example, a customer calls your sales team to discuss modifying their order. This is processed by the agent, which then is updated on the system. As the order has yet to have been dispatched, your picking team in the warehouse will pick up the amendment on their screen and send out the correct order.
Helps you to understand your business better
Your business generates an incredible amount of data. ERP has analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools that can be tailored to produce the information you need, outputted through dashboards and reports. Things like sales reports, customer transaction history are available in real-time for your business to interrogate, helping you make smarter decisions.
Increases efficiency with automation
By automating business processes, ERP makes them more efficient, less prone to error and frees you up from repetitive manual tasks. Business functions like procure-to-pay, order-to-fulfilment and billing can be easily automated with ERP, helping to improve your organisational productivity.
Streamlines the supply chain
An ERP system extends beyond your organisation, it also integrates with both your supplier and customer systems, helping you to streamline your purchasing, manufacturing, inventory and sales order processing.
If you’re interested in finding out more about ERP, call one of Advantage’s ERP experts on 020 3004 4600 or visit our ERP page here
