Your ERP system is a vital backbone of your business and should provide the functionality necessary to run your business, is easy and convenient for the users and delivers a competitive advantage. Is your ERP system meeting those needs?
It may be time to replace your current ERP system with one that is better able to support your company’s requirements with the following considerations:
1. The current system is lacking in functionality, is cumbersome and slow. There are more efficient ways to accomplish many of your business processes and tasks.
2. Operating costs are too high. Older systems can get increasingly expensive to operate, especially if the software version is no longer supported, the hardware is antiquated and increasingly unreliable and if there are a lot of customisations made.
3. Does your current system support emerging business needs like web sales, collaboration or business intelligence. Customers, suppliers, and partners expect direct access to billing, shipping, and inventory data. They don’t want to call someone to get this information and you don’t want to generate unnecessary customer service calls. Older systems weren’t designed for multiple user access and tend to be less customer-service oriented.
4. More and more of the workforce is doing work from mobile devices on the road, using tablets, laptops, and phones. Does your ERP solution turn this mobility into a clear business advantage by providing a seamless transition experience from the office, to home, to mobile, and back?
5. Your staff rely on spreadsheets to get their jobs done. This is a big red flag. If the function can’t be accomplished within the system, you are not getting the benefits you paid for and the system is not supporting your business needs.
6. You lose business to competitors because they are simply easier to do business with or their customer service is better.
7. Your company is growing or changing faster than the system can support and you need better control of your processes. When new processes and technologies start showing up in your market, do system limitations prevent you from moving forward against the competition?
8. Decision-makers are frustrated by lack of easy access to the information they need about the business, sales and markets. If you have to dig for up-to-date information, it slows critical decision-making and impairs problem-solving capacity. You need to know what parts of your business are working and what aren’t—and you need to know fast.
A properly selected and implemented ERP system should be an enabler, not a preventer of efficient and effective operations and market-leading customer service. The reality is though, if you’re failing to meet customer needs and you’ve begun to notice process inefficiencies, waiting to switch could hurt your business profitability both now and into the future.
