According to Panorama Consulting’s 2024 report, ERP for small business manufacturing holds the highest adoption rate. It stands at approximately 39% among industries like construction, healthcare, and retail. In this report, over 95% of organizations were able to achieve better customer experience, 80% removed data silos and 63% of organizations saved operating costs.
This highlights the significant potential and benefits of ERP for SMEs. However, for small and medium enterprises, the investment in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system might appear daunting.
These findings highlight the significant potential and benefits of ERP for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, many SMEs may find the investment in an ERP system daunting due to the complexity and cost. Additionally, there is potential disruption during implementation.
Despite these short-term challenges, the long-term benefits of a well-planned ERP implementation far outweigh the initial hurdles. ERP systems enable SMEs to automate processes, gain efficiencies, and allow employees to focus on higher-value work.
They provide a central platform to standardize operations across various locations. While over-customization should be avoided, ERPs with the right level of customization can be transformative. They can significantly streamline business operations for organizations.
In this blog, we'll discuss 10 key reasons why SMEs should take the plunge and invest in an ERP right now.
10 Reasons Why SMEs Must Invest in ERPs
There are several reasons that make an ERP implementation worth exploring for SMEs. To help you understand the benefits ERPs can bring to your business, here are 10 reasons why investing in an ERP system is advantageous for SMEs:
1. Automate manual processes
ERPs for SMEs allow you to automate manual, time-consuming processes like purchasing workflows, approvals, project budgets, and billing. A process that takes an employee 8 hours a week can add up to significant time savings over a year, when automated. This frees up your staff to focus on higher-value activities and enable more value creation overall.
2. Gain a single source of truth
With data and processes centralized in an ERP, you gain a single source of truth. Information is no longer spread across disparate spreadsheets and systems. This provides management with an accurate, holistic view of the business. It also ensures that all employees are working off the same data.
3. Enable remote work
Integrated cloud-based ERPs for SMEs allow employees to access the system and perform their jobs from anywhere. This supports remote work, which is increasingly becoming the norm. Your staff can enter data, run reports, and collaborate through a single platform, no matter their location.
4. Standardize processes across locations
For SMEs with multiple offices, an ERP enables you to standardize processes across locations. This is especially important for SMEs growing through acquisition. An ERP provides a common platform and enforces standard workflows company-wide.
5. Support scalability
The right ERP supports your company's growth and scales with you as you expand to new locations and lines of business. Without an ERP, adding new products, services, warehouses, or offices requires adding new spreadsheets, access databases, or point solutions. This creates a hairball of siloed tools and data.
6. Enforce financial controls
ERPs for SMEs enhance financial controls by enforcing proper approval workflows, maintaining audit trails, and generating required financial reports. This is critical as your company scales. Increased financial scrutiny from investors, auditors, and regulators makes these controls essential.
7. Provide visibility into operations
ERPs for SMEs give management real-time visibility into sales, costs, inventory levels, project status, and more. Reports and dashboards allow you to spot trends and make data-driven decisions. This provides a competitive edge over companies relying on gut instinct and outdated data in spreadsheets.
8. Reduce IT costs and complexity
While an ERP software implementation for an SME requires a significant upfront investment, it can reduce IT costs and complexity in the long run. It allows you to retire legacy systems, consolidate tools, and minimize interfaces. Cloud based ERPs for SMEs remove the burden of maintaining servers and pushing out software updates.
9. Improve customer service
With an integrated CRM and ERP for SMEs, your sales and service reps have instant access to a customer's order history, shipping status, payment information, and service issues. This allows them to rapidly answer customer questions and resolve problems. They won't need to put customers on hold while hunting for information across multiple systems. Some ERPs also include customer self-service portals.
10. Attract top talent and prepare for succession
To attract the best talent, you need to equip your employees with modern, digital tools, not clunky spreadsheets and manual workarounds. Top performers will quickly become disillusioned if they spend their days on low-value work that could be easily automated with an ERP. Well-documented processes in an ERP also make sure smooth succession planning and employee transitions.
Use Deskera ERP to Grow Your Business
If you're tired of dealing with scattered information and inefficient processes, you're not alone. Many small businesses struggle with managing their operations effectively. That's where Deskera ERP comes in.
Deskera ERP is designed to solve the challenges faced by growing businesses like yours. It helps you:
- Save time by automating tasks and reducing manual work
- Make informed decisions with real-time data and reports
- Manage all your business functions from one central system
- Grow your business without worrying about outgrowing your software
With Deskera ERP, you get a user-friendly and affordable solution that's tailored to your needs. You don't need to be a tech expert to use it – our team is here to support you every step of the way.
So why wait? Take control of your business with Deskera ERP and start growing smarter.
Sign up for a free trial today and see the difference for yourself!
Key Takeaways
To summarize, here are the key takeaways:
- While an ERP software implementation for SMEs is a major undertaking, the benefits involve a lot from process automation to improved visibility and scalability.
- Some customization is often required to make an ERP work for your business. Over-customization makes upgrades difficult and expensive.
- The key is to find the right balance and to thoroughly understand the business case for any customization. With proper planning and change management, an ERP can be transformative for SMEs, allowing you to scale efficiently, attract top talent, and make better data-driven decisions.
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Deskera Content Team
Shikha Samant
Shashank Dixit
RVJ
