ERP For A Small Business? Necessity, Trend Or Luxury?

Question of the day “ERP for a small business? Necessity, trend, or luxury?”

It is often said that ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning solutions are a costly option only available for the giants in the industry.

That couldn’t be further from the truth in today’s business environment. Good ERP systems are getting cheaper and cheap ERP systems are getting better than ever. One of the main reasons for this interesting situation is that the internet has pulled down the cost of building a robust ERP system by a big margin.

What small businesses need to understand is that they need to tap into this resource. They should give importance to the implementation of quality ERP software for small businesses to grow at a faster rate and stay ahead of the competition.

What Exactly Is ERP?

While the ERP term was coined by Gartner in 1990, it has been in use for more than a hundred years[*]. Initially, it was used for inventory and manufacturing processes, but it has grown to be much more than what it was originally planned for.

Short for Enterprise Resource Planning, it is a business tool that gives structure to the organizational management of a company. It is used in departments like accounting, customer relationship management(CRM), human resource management(HRM), project management(PM), and other various areas of an organization.

The best thing about an ERP system is that it has the capability to integrate information among multiple areas and provide a better data evaluation. All the process that occurs inside your company is interconnected using a shared secured database.

Where one employee can benefit from the information from other departments make for a truly combined experience.

If you want to learn more about ERP check out our previous article. We covered all the basics of ERP there. Below we tried to give some reasons why small businesses need ERP and how it benefits them.

How Can Small Business ERP Benefit You?

Advancements in cloud computing infrastructure really did the trick here. It has brought down the cost of capable small business ERP systems extremely low. Nowadays it doesn’t make sense for a business no matter how big or small it is, not to use an ERP.

Increases The Flexibility & Scalability Of Your Team

Your team members are the biggest asset to your organization. Parallel to this statement scaling can be a hard task when you are dealing with a large number of people within your company. This is why ERP for small businesses makes a difference.

It introduces a better option for your teammate to collaborate and work together. That too in a more efficient manner. Time is really important when it comes to growing your small/medium business. What ERP will do is make sure all the limited time that you have among the members is spent in the most productive way.

Automation That Reduces Repetitive Manual Work

Why do the things that can be automated? There are simple automation tactics that can save a lot of time in the long run for your business.

Create a separate account in the Accounting department automatically for a customer each time he/she is added to your CRM system or when an account of one of your employees is deleted from the HRM system it will also be deleted from the Payroll system all in real-time or create an email that wishes an employee “Happy Birthday” from a predefined template that you set.

All of this can be done automatically using the automation features that you get using an ERP system. These simple automated tasks might seem silly but they will save you a lot of time and manpower in the long run.

Combine & Keep Record Of All Documents Centrally

Unorganized documents are the worst! You can’t find the one important document that you need right now, on time.

Not anymore!

After using a small business ERP system for all your documentation needs, you will never have to face this problem again. Gone will be the days when you need to be dependent on other people and wait for them to send you that important doc. There are also some other benefits to this as well.

Double entry of data becomes nearly obsolete. A central database manages everything. Administration personnel can follow up on an entire process. And the most useful of all, you don’t have to keep important documents on individual computers. Also, it is possible to maintain them securely from a single place.

See The Latest Updates In Real Time

The internet has made us impatient. There is an idea that everyone believes in – information should be up to date. Applying this to the workforce of your organization can greatly benefit productivity and reduce the overall needed time for finishing a task.

At the same time, the latest information is readily available at all times. So if a Customer Relationship Manager wants to follow up on something and needs information from the HR departments at a certain time he/she can do so. Updates all happen in real-time. Everything is ready and updated at all times.

Follow the Same Best Practices Used By Big Enterprise

“If you can’t beat them, join them”

Do what the biggest enterprises in the world are doing. Every small organizational head wants their company to succeed and come into the limelight of the biggest stages. A place where big players are competing with each other. But the road to that is tough.

There are some strategies you can follow, growth hacks you can apply. Follow up with what they are doing and try to implement that in your circle no matter how small the implementation it might be.

One of the early practices you can implement is starting using Enterprise Resource Planning. Every big corporation in the world knows the importance of ERP and uses one right now.

Signs That Tell You Need an ERP System

Below are some signs that show you need an ERP as soon as possible in order to grow your business.

• Your company is struggling with productivity and wasting much of its time on things that don’t matter that much
• There is clearly a communication gap between the different departments of your company as they don’t have access to each other’s common information
• You are struggling with double entry of data
• You manage your inventory using Spreadsheet or some similar tool
• There is a need of keeping a central record of all the customer interactions that you did so far
• You are still dependent on physical paper
• There is no automatic report generation available in your organization. You have to do everything manually.

And the list goes on. While others are important too these are the red zones.

Why Choose WP ERP for Your Small Business

The major struggle of a small business is it can’t afford a tool only to manage its business processes. And most people have misconceptions about ERP that they are only for larger organizations.

Yes, there was a time when only bigshots with substantial investments could afford to integrate automation into their business processes and reap the amazing ERP benefits. With the advancement and availability of modern technology, ERP solutions are now affordable even for smaller companies.

An effective ERP system saves a lot of working hours. It also reduces the chance of human error to almost zero. These things have a monetary value that can be added to the price of the ERP system. If you consider the outcomes of using ERP software, it is not too much expensive as most people think.

Under the above circumstances, WordPress ERP can be the best ERP software for small businesses. How? WordPress websites are easy to manage at a low cost. WP ERP also has customizable plans for every small and mid-sized company. And, most importantly, anyone with little technical knowledge can manage a WordPress plugin like WP ERP.

Since you can choose personalized small business ERP packages, you can pay as you go. That means if you have 15 employees, you can choose a plan that works for only 15 users and charges less. You’ll have to pay more for more users. Thus, ERP solutions can help businesses of any size.

Supercharge Your Small Business with a WordPress ERP System

We hope, by now, you realize that small businesses need ERP if they want to benefit from all the great features that come with it. If you have a small business and are looking for an ERP plugin that plays nicely with WordPress, WP ERP is the right choice. It has three important modules (HRM, CRM, & Accounting) required for any business. All these modules have 30+ extensions to help manage your business processes smoothly.

Don’t take our word for it. You have every right to measure the level of efficiency of our products. We want you to check how WP ERP works before finally using it. You can check out WP ERP, it is completely FREE to get started on.

Source: https://wperp.com/14505/small-business-erp/