When many companies come to us looking for the right Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, they’re focused on accounting, finding a CRM, and managing day-to-day operations within their business. While a great ERP delivers on this, it can also extend beyond the walls of the business to provide a connection with customers and vendors.
Here are four ways an ERP solution can add value to your customer and vendor relationships.
- Provide your customers with easy communication through a customer portal. We partner with Acumatica to provide their cloud ERP to our customers. This includes a customer self-service portal, providing your customers secure access to orders, invoices, documents, and support cases. It provides an easy way for them to view past invoices, create new orders themselves, and interact with your business 24/7, rather than narrowing it down to only regular business hours. You can free up time for customer support and your sales team by providing ways for your customers to manage some of their tasks and questions at their convenience. Also, if your sales team doesn’t currently have a way to place orders real-time while on the road, this gives them that capability.
- Setup is ridiculously easy. Configuring the self-service portal that comes with the Acumatica Cloud ERP solution is pretty much a snap. Once enabled, you can provide business to business (B2B) ordering, case management, and financials through the portal. You can easily control which customers have the ability to place their own orders and view their financial statuses with limited reports.
- Customers can access their negotiated information. Within the customer portal, your customers will see their specific prices and inventory levels for products that they are able to purchase. And it’s based on a real-time inventory of your Acumatica production data. No need to worry about customers placing their own orders on products that aren’t in stock or no longer available. They can also view past orders and whether shipments have gone out for delivery. That’s one less phone call for your sales or customer service team.
- Customers can check their own account balances. Within the portal, they can view outstanding invoices and their net balance on their own. Help them have an easier way to stay on top of sending you payments.
The customer portal comes as part of Acumatica’s Customer Management Suite and provides superb value, supporting the tools that cover business processes, CRM, and accounting. Connect with us for more information about how an ERP system can help your business. Streamline your work and give customers the complete experience of doing business with you!