Business owners are always looking for ways to manage their daily operations more efficiently. You want to provide the right resources for patients to make their visits easier. If you’re searching for new tools to implement, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is an excellent investment.
This article will cover:
What ERP software is
How it benefits growing businesses
Examples of how to utilize ERP software
Resources that can help provide a better customer experience
There’s quite a bit to cover here with each of these topics. If you’re wondering if ERP software is right for your business, you’ll have all the answers you need to decide by the end of this article. Read on to get all the information.
What Is ERP Software?
ERP software is a resource to help your business manage everyday tasks. It integrates your main business practices into one streamlined system. Any modern organization will use several digital tools to track data and improve the customer experience. Common tools include:
Accounting software
Data-tracking software
Customer relationship management (CRM) software
Scheduling systems
All of these and more are critical aspects of an organization’s system. However, they are often accessed through separate software and systems. You may use QuickBooks for accounting, Salesforce for CRM, Microsoft Excel for manually tracking key data, and so on.
Managing all of these different programs in different places can create disorganization and frustration. An ERP helps by eliminating the need for separate software to manage certain everyday tasks. Instead, you can manage all these functions through one system that tracks everything. In doing so, your employees, patients, and bottom line will all benefit.
How Can ERP Software Benefit Your Business?
If you still aren’t convinced, there are several other ways ERP software benefits businesses. Here are some of the main benefits:
1. Track key performance indicators (KPIs)
Every organization wants to get the best results for patients. Valuable key performance indicators like customer lifetime value, revenue growth, and employee productivity can show you how you’re performing. ERP software can track all that data in an organized system.
2. More efficient customer service
If ever an organization needed to offer quick, efficient service, it’s small and growing businesses. Emergencies are frequent, and you need to be able to process information through your systems fast to get patients the care they need. An ERP will provide you with information in a single place to speed up systems drastically.
3. Increase information security
Cybersecurity is a major concern for every business. It’s especially important for every business that handles transactions, where sensitive information can be vulnerable to malicious actors. If you store information across numerous software programs, this increases the chances of a data breach—intentional or otherwise. Putting everything on an ERP makes storage more efficient and helps you focus security measures in one place.
4. Reduce physical and digital storage needs
Having a vast amount of information spread across paper hard copies and digital files creates a storage nightmare. That’s a big problem for businesses that have to be timely and organized. You can reduce your storage and free up physical and digital space by using ERP software for everything.
As you can tell, an ERP can be a valuable resource. The next section will provide some additional examples to show how these benefits can come into play.
How ERP Software Can Help Streamline Processes
If you’re looking for an ERP to help manage your growing business, here are some key results to look for in the software that you choose:
Streamline the customer experience while keeping everything organized and secure
Manage billing, documents, scheduling, and more all in one place
Create digital customer and vendor portals that make setting appointments and organizing schedules easy
Use tried and true accounting practices to manage your financials appropriately
All these features and more will help your business provide better and more efficient service.
Conclusion
There you have it. You should now have the information you need to decide if implementing an ERP will be right for your organization.
Using one will benefit your bottom line by organizing your financials, customer portals, document management, and more all in one place.
These days, it seems like a rarity that cybersecurity doesn’t make at least one headline in the daily news cycle. More accurately, these headlines are primarily instances where there is a drastic lack of cybersecurity.
In today’s environment where employees are working remotely as well as geographically scattered, security has become everyone’s job—not just the responsibility of the IT department. Every employee of every sized business, from interns to CEOs, SMEs to Fortune 500 companies, needs to increase their cybersecurity diligence.
Many people treat their cybersecurity responsibilities as they would a recommendation from their dentist—being instructed to floss more and cut back on sweets often falls on deaf ears.
Without proper cybersecurity hygiene (creating strong passwords, avoiding phishing emails, using outdated software, etc) your business and your bottom line are in danger of rot and decay.
Fortunately, there are technological solutions that provide businesses and users with vast safeguards against malicious actors. Namely, cloud-based all-in-one ERP software.
How To Maintain ERP Safety and Security
As far as software is concerned, cloud ERP software is resoundingly safer than traditional data centers. In fact, the use of cloud infrastructure generally results in 60% fewer security incidents.
In reality, it is the usage, policies, and mechanisms of control that fail—not the technology itself.
Jay Heiser, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, has some poignant advice for CIOs in the position of managing their cloud ERP software:
“CIOs need to ensure that their security teams are not holding back cloud initiatives with unsubstantiated cloud security worries. Exaggerated fears can result in lost opportunity and inappropriate spending.”
He suggests that instead of asking “Is the cloud secure?” executives should be asking “Am I using the cloud securely?”
Similarly, a car manufacturer would not be to blame in the event of an accident where the driver was speeding excessively, using their phone, and not wearing a seat belt.
Let’s take a look at the most crucial areas and aspects of ERP software that require the most attention to detail in terms of maintaining network security.
Stay Uniform
As software complexity increases, the possibility of errors increases along with it. For businesses with over 200 employees, some ERPs provide over 800,000 software customizations that can be controlled by users.
In order to combat this, it’s important to establish data management protocols within your organization and assign access accordingly. Onboarding, training, offboarding, and continuous internal software support will only benefit your organization.
Conduct Internal Audits
Audits are an important part of any well-oiled business, so why wouldn’t the same be true for your software? While the best ERPs adhere to strict security standards, it’s important to conduct audits of how employees and other users under your organization’s umbrella are using the system.
Are their passwords secure? Are they accessing data from unsecured networks? Who has access and the ability to change system settings?
These questions and more are some that you will want to address and answer internally—every business and every industry has different needs, rules, and regulations.
Utilize Software Training and Support Staff
Your employees—in this case, your ERP users—are at the heart of everything your business does. Security is no exception. If users are cavalier about company data, protocols, and necessary procedures, it can lead to fiscal headaches and wasted time.
All too often, ERP software systems are implemented without an expert support team. Having a savvy support staff is crucial for successful employee adoption of the software.
Though management may be able to point to the vast benefits of ERP software (cost savings, better communication, improved document management, etc.) it takes a true expert in the software itself to successfully, fully onboard employees.
Benefits of ERP Software: Built-In Security Standards
ERP software is full of all kinds of benefits—risk mitigation is a major one. No piece of technology on earth is entirely invulnerable to malicious activity, but ERP software provides a myriad of ways to protect your business’s valuable data and processes.
One of the brilliant aspects of ERP software is that it’s able to provide a wide range of solutions to a wide range of logistical challenges. The “all-in-one” nature of ERP software keeps businesses fully connected and integrated—in turn, this allows businesses to address problems with a bird’s eye view, removing the guesswork and wasted energy that often accompanies the problem-solving process.
Cloud Security
Compared to other data storage methods that have been prominent in the past (most notably local servers and analog data storage) the cloud is a resoundingly safer solution.
It’s a tried-and-true method that businesses continue to invest in—in the first quarter of 2023, cloud services infrastructure spending increased to $41.8 billion on a global level. Compared to the same period in 2020, this was a 35% year-on-year growth and a 5% quarter-on-quarter rise.
While cloud security as an industry has proven to be safe, scalable, and cost-efficient, it’s important to know who bears the technical responsibility of hosting your data.
Does your cloud infrastructure provider delegate some hosting responsibilities to third-party organizations? Is your cloud ERP implementation team the same organization that actually does the work of storing your data?
Ideally, none of these questions will ever actually matter because your data will be forever safe and secure. Nevertheless, it’s important to do your due diligence on every organization your data is affiliated with. Most of the time, these answers can all be obtained from a single conversation with your ERP provider.
Frequent System Updates
Software updates serve an important purpose across the world’s entire technological landscape. And, no, it’s not to annoy you with a loading screen that lingers a bit too long for your liking.
Software updates are vital—they patch security flaws, protect data, and improve system performance. When it comes to ERP software, updates are frequent and full of substance.
Data Redundancy
What’s the only thing more important than keeping your data safe? Keeping your data safe—twice, three times, or more.
Cloud storage capabilities that are baked into the best ERP software systems allow users to fully access and update data sets while keeping up-to-the-second backups safe and secure. Gone are the days that it’s required to make multiple physical copies or even manually copy and paste documents.
With a staggering chunk of the American workforce still working remotely—often on personal, security-poor workstations—it’s even more important to have enterprise-level redundancy measures in place. Data redundancy is a central focus of every ERP system.
Data Encryption
Data redundancy is a crucial piece of the cybersecurity puzzle. Data encryption is an equally large piece, too. The higher the quality of the encryption measures, the higher the quality of protection that your business will enjoy. Fortunately, ERP systems maintain exceptionally high-security standards.
By nearly every conceivable metric, cyber-attacks and cybersecurity incidents have increased over the last several years. The pandemic has led to an aggressive explosion of this pre-existing uptrend.
Disconnected software systems with vastly differing security protocols simply do not cut it anymore—ERP software provides a lasting, secure solution to cybersecurity.
Installing An Administrator
ERP software needs to be safe and secure every single time it’s used. This isn’t a request or a “wishlist” item—it’s a requirement. In all reality, safety and security is just the beginning.
ERP software is built to serve people of all roles and responsibilities. The best way to ensure that every user is able to operate in an efficient and safe manner? Choose an ERP with a detailed permissions-based system.
Some employees will need more access than others. It’s important to be able to have varying roles with differing capabilities while all working under one, unified software umbrella.
Now you may be thinking “Even if I have a tech-savvy employee, they’re still new to using this ERP system too. How can they be functional administrators?” The answer to this question: training and consulting sessions with the ERP’s native support staff.
The support staff of an ERP system is there to help you get the most out of your software. They’ll answer questions, offer advice on best practices, generate guides and other instructional materials, and so on and so forth. They’ll be able to provide the crucial assistance you need during the initial adoption process.
They’ll be able to show your organization how to properly assign and edit permissions for every employee, where and when it’s safe to access data, and how to protect your system against phishing attacks, unauthorized user access, and other malicious activities.
Just like a great coach, they’ll be there to guide you while allowing you to learn and explore on your own.
Modern ERPs are Safe, Secure, and Reliable
Cybersecurity is the framework that ERP software relies upon. Without extended and continuous security measures in place, the benefits that ERP software brings to businesses are all for naught.
But security efforts don’t end with lines of code—it takes the effort of all of your employees in addition to your ERP’s support staff day in and day out.
ERP software sourced from cloud computing technology is the gold standard of enterprise data security, and you and your employees need to be the gold standard in making sure safety protocols and precautions are implemented and followed.
Every business has a lot of moving parts. Whether your business manufactures goods in a factory or provides in-home services to customers, it is equally important to have a unified and clear picture of all of the components of your operation.
As you work towards attaining a more all-encompassing view of your operations, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of projects and tasks. In other words, sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.
One skill that can be useful in tackling an abundant and overflowing to-do list? Delegation.
When you hear the term “delegation” you are probably imagining handing off work to your employees. While this will still be true, some of the most powerful delegations are not ones you task to your employees—it’s the work you hand off to your integrated business management software.
Delegating tasks to your integrated business software provides some of the same benefits as traditional delegation. You (and your employees) will have time to focus on higher-level tasks, it will open up time to learn new skills and conduct market research, and it will improve efficiency across the board.
Even for tasks that still require a deft human touch, integrated business software provides a tangible procedural advantage that improves operational success and efficiency across the board.
What Is Integrated Business Software?
Integrated business software is a seamless collection of solutions, processes, and data. Accounting modules, customer records, and smart calendars are just some of the previously isolated functionalities and features that integrated business software unifies.
Notably, business needs vary by size, industry, and even season of the year. One key element of integrated business software is that it’s adaptive and elastic to the nuances of industry needs—while one business is looking for an alternative to their existing accounting software, another will focus on generating automated sales reports.
Integrated business software handles it all, providing connectivity and clarity throughout every facet of your business.
On the highest level, it ensures that you, your customers, and your employees have immediate, accurate, and complete access to all pertinent information. It detangles and connects previously disconnected silos within your business so that processes can run smoother and more efficiently than before.
Challenges Caused By Disconnected Software Systems
Without an integrated business management software system, businesses typically rely on a handful of disconnected software suites to get the job done.
Even if you’re primarily using standard, powerful spreadsheet and storage software systems, there are still issues that arise. The tricky part? Many of these issues often don’t come to light until it’s too late.
Let’s take a look at some of the operational issues and inefficiencies caused by disconnected software systems:
Delayed Data and Reporting
Having accurate data is good—but having accurate, real-time, and easily accessible data is great.
Without accurate, timely, and complete information, businesses suffer each year—it’s estimated that businesses lose 20% of their potential revenue due to poor-quality data. From marketing to sales to inventory management, bad data can have a profoundly negative impact on your bottom line.
Wasted Productivity
Every minute spent having to correct an error or reiterate a piece of information’s authenticity is a minute wasted. Businesses that are aiming for rapid growth can’t afford to waste this much time.
If your business is using software systems that don’t communicate with each other, it sets into motion a cascade of worsening problems—extra time spent accessing and parsing data sets leads to errors in data entry, which delays reporting time and adds unnecessary hours to your payroll. In turn, it takes time away from more important tasks.
When your employees are entering data in multiple locations, manually sifting through invoices to address a single customer’s issue, or constantly having to check back in from the field, progress suffers. Processes like these can be automated by integrated business software.
Increased Cost
As business owners know all too well, unexpected costs always have a way of dipping into—or breaking—your budget.
Some costs of having disconnected software systems are obvious and upfront. As in, paying for numerous software solutions and the corresponding upgrades, repairs, and support.
Other costs are more indirect—multiple software systems mean multiple interfaces, which typically require additional employee training and time spent learning the nuances of each. This leads to more time spent learning how to transfer data between each and time spent correcting errors that occur during this process.
This wasted time eats into productivity which could be spent on more productive and profitable tasks.
Benefits of Having Integrated Business Management Software
All businesses have growing pains. It’s natural. But as a business owner, it’s important to recognize the difference between when you’re simply adjusting to a learning curve rather than when it’s time to rethink and reshape inefficient processes and procedures.
These are the main ways that integrated business software will help alleviate ongoing procedural woes:
Increased Visibility
Your data needs to be universally accessible—one person on a certain device in a particular location shouldn’t be the sole arbiter of your data. Sure, not everyone in your organization will need access to the same information, but it’s important that people have access to what they need, anywhere and anytime.
Informed decisions are great— but those that can be made quickly without sacrificing accuracy are the best decisions. When most employees are required to get data to make a business decision, only 3% are able to do it in seconds. For 60%, it takes hours or days.
Process Efficiency
Inventory management, accounting, project management, and the hiring process—while these processes all seem separate and different in nature, they actually have a lot in common.
Namely, they are all common business processes that can eat up valuable time during the workday. In other words, your business can benefit from automating these processes using integrated business software.
Currently, CEOs spend 20% of their time on tasks that could be automated—imagine the innovation and growth you could achieve with 20% more time to put towards work that requires that critical human touch.
Cost Savings
According to a McKinsey report, 45% of current paid activities can be automated by today’s technology, an equivalent of $2 trillion in total annual wages.
Automation capabilities aside, integrated business software is a cheaper alternative than procuring, installing, and maintaining multiple software—and possibly hardware—systems.
Integrated Business Software: The Bottom Line
Integrated business software isn’t only for large businesses or even businesses in certain industries. Sure, there will always be nuances, but at the end of the day, every business needs to put an emphasis on efficiency and cost-cutting.
It’s not always easy to abandon the way you’ve done things in the past. After all, your success has gotten you this far. The good news is that you don’t have to abandon anything really—utilizing integrated business software is about changing how certain processes are completed, not changing the processes themselves.
Increased operational visibility, process efficiency, and reduced costs are just a few of the benefits that integrated business software can offer. Every business is unique—talking with an expert can help you figure out how your business can put integrated business software to work for you.
[Editor’s Note: The following is a guest article provided by Finances Online]
Although every business organization operates under unique parameters, one common challenge that they face is staying ahead in today’s fiercely competitive business environment. This calls for an efficient way of storing and accessing all business-related information so management has an overall picture of the performance of the business. This is where an Enterprise Resource Planning software or ERP system can play an important role.
An ERP system can integrate the flow of information from, to, and within your enterprise into a comprehensive information system that’s accessible to every stakeholder across your organization.
How ERP Software Can Help
To succeed in the complex and highly competitive modern business environment, companies need to put in place a system that allows them to easily streamline, automate, and scale their operations. This calls for real-time reporting, informed decision-making, cost savings efficiency and more.
According to a successful ERP case study, ERP helped global giant LG Electronics to centrally manage its 114 subsidiaries and more than 82,000 employees across 40 countries. Business performance is a conglomeration of key performance indicators. With that, getting all these indicators in one place is the job of an ERP software. Indeed, an ERP system can improve your structure and business practices in a number of ways. Here are some examples:
1. Automate and Streamline Back Office Jobs
Whatever business you are in, you have quite a few back-office jobs like accounting, sales, CRM, and HR, among others. An effective ERP system can help business leaders automate and streamline back-office jobs by allowing employees to use accurately maintained shared data without being inhibited by the inconsistencies of manual records. While it can help your employees become more successful in their respective roles in the organization, it can also offer you real-time visibility into the operations of your business.
2. Better Information Management Through Business Automation
Performance metrics are vital for evaluating the progress of your business. They not only help with current insights, but also assist in setting up goals for your future endeavors. Nevertheless, measurement becomes a tough job as your business continues to grow.
Manual calculation of profit ratio, sales margin, and various other indicators are simply not possible on a regular basis. However, these are vital parameters for the evaluation of business performance. An innovative business software in the form of an effective ERP solution can automate this suite of jobs.
With the help of an ERP system, your employees across different departments of the organization can access shared data. There is no need to maintain and correlate manual records about every transaction. The system can also generate synchronized reports about key performance indicators.
3. Effective Workflow Leads To Enhanced Productivity
ERP software can streamline the workflow across all departments of your organization and simplify access to all data through user-friendly interfaces. Employees can acquire relevant information and apply it to their respective jobs. They can extract customized and standard reports, formulate reports for presentations, and more.
4. Centralize Data Ensures Greater Efficiency
An effective ERP system can integrate all the data relevant to your business in a centralized storage system. This helps in streamlining access to data and adding data to the existing bank. In fact, ERP helps businesses to achieve greater efficiency in marketing by centralizing all data about sales in one central location.
5. Simplify Business Accounting
As your business continues to grow, keeping track of your accounting process becomes increasingly difficult when employees are doing it manually. Business accounting entails complex figures across a range of departments like sales, finance, accounting, and HR. An ERP can easily streamline the accounting process further by integrating accounting and CRM. With this, your business can do away with the time and effort needed to update business accounts manually, thereby enhancing your employee productivity and efficiency.
6. Elimination of Redundancies
If each department of your business keeps its relevant data relevant in a secluded environment, redundancy or repetition of data is very likely to occur. This can lead to confusion and inconsistencies in data management. Multiple data storage locations without any synchronization between them can lead to data inaccuracy. An ERP system can eliminate instances of task repetition, errors in inventory, and loss of data. It provides centralized visibility of data across departments with an accurate and real-time picture.
7. Better Customer Satisfaction
You need to keep customers satisfied while managing sales, inventory, and accounting process efficiently. If you are keeping your inventory data and customer data in different locations, you may not get updated product-related information without updated inventory data.
Data inconsistency can be disastrous for customer relations as well as product-related decisions. With the help of ERP software, you can ensure the maintenance of up-to-date data about products and also get data updated in real-time.
ERP Implementation Is a Must For Your Business
Browsing through various solutions on the market to find which one suits your business best can be a daunting task. Still, it’s about time that you replace traditional legacy software with an enhanced ERP solution that can help you grow and manage your business efficiently. If you’re hesitant to implement the solution at one go, you can start with an introduction to ERP in your organization and then subsequently include all the departments in a phased manner.
