According to a Statista Survey in 2016, Quickbooks is the most well-known accounting software supplier for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Around 70 percent of SME owners are familiar with it, compared to the second place, Paychex, at only 25 percent. Quickbooks is a go-to solution for so many because it works so well for businesses of a certain size. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you feel like you may have grown beyond that size.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) goes above and beyond accounting software like Quickbooks or Paychex. You up your game when you include the ability to manage your inventory, optimize your relationships with a CRM, prepare better for audits, find data for decision making through global search, even perform administrative functions like scheduling and assigning projects.

Quickbooks and spreadsheets work. But they can only take you so far. Perhaps you could compare them to training wheels. When a kid is learning to ride a bike for the first time, training wheels help toward success by supporting balance. He or she can get around just fine, but if one really wants to pick up speed and travel long distances or compete in races, that child needs to take off those training wheels and invest in a road bike. An investment like this changes one’s biking abilities just like it would change the game for your business.

Here are some of the best benefits of making the switch to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

  1. Business and customer growth. Quickbooks and spreadsheets helped you grow your company to where you are today. They’ve been good enough. All growing businesses, however, reach a point where they realize that their system of spreadsheets and Quickbooks can’t keep pace. They can only cover so much of your financials, and you have to find another system to handle production. Does your inventory management interface with your books? Your growing business ends up with silo-ed information. It’s hard to create a complete picture of your business, and you’re having to maintain all of your different systems.
  2. All of your data gets combined into one system. Once you migrate to ERP software, you could host a retirement party for your spreadsheets and duplicated data. Your business now lives in a single data storage world. How would your business productivity increase with one system, one source of truth?
  3. Adaptability and integration will change your life. It’s true: that seems like a bold statement, but these are two of the biggest advantages of ERP software. Quickbooks and spreadsheets can’t scale to meet any user size, but ERP software can – and it does it well. Its adaptability is excellent. It also offers the integration to connect all of your departments: simplifying software compatibility worries, getting rid of duplicated data and promoting accountability.
  4. Automated monitoring. With Quickbooks, have you ever received the notification “Not Enough Quantity” when selling an item on an invoice? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a system that can manage inventory and other tracking for you, sending notifications based on rules you’ve defined? ERP to the rescue. You can set up business activity monitoring, which scans all areas of your business on a regular schedule and outputs a number of different actions from what is found, from email alerts, to reports, to automatically updating databases or starting various workflows. Just think of the savings you can find by catching low inventory, getting flagged of an issue with a production line or improving your forecasting. It can be tailored to your needs. We’ve worked with a ton of industries on this and can share some great examples of ways it could be used for your organization.
  5. Meeting regulations easily. More and more industries must meet more and stricter regulations as the amount of data handled by all organizations increases. That means your business has to meet certain standards and prepare for audits. ERP software is better suited for meeting compliance expectations because it tracks any area of your business to the level of detail required. You will improve your visibility and transparency of business practices as well, which are two major elements of regulatory compliance in pretty much all industries.

Is your business ready to find the right ERP fit? Are you still unsure whether you need to upgrade from Quickbooks? Let’s chat. We can help you understand how well your current system is meeting your needs. Together, we can review various factors for determining whether you should invest in a “road bike.” Those factors include such things as the number of transactions processed each day, how many end users you have, the volume of data, whether you need better reporting capabilities and the impact a combined solution could have on your organization. As businesses and industries become more integrated, more reliant on technology and more data driven, it’s important to be aware of how you’re handling information and whether you’re meeting regulatory requirements. ERP software is a long-term investment with both immediate and long-term returns on your investment. Ditch your training wheels, climb on your new road bike and take off on your first century ride. Those 100 miles will feel like a breeze with a solution we’ve tailored exactly to your business.