In order to remain competitive, your business must always keep at least one eye focused down the road.
Change is the only constant. The conditions that impact your success or failure now, can and will change. This could happen in five years, five months, or even five days in some cases. That level of uncertainty proves to be a major challenge for businesses.
Luckily, an ERP system can help you prepare for the future and avoid becoming a cautionary business tale.
Identify new revenue sources
Even if your company is not in a grow-or-die scenario, it’s naive to think that the revenue streams you rely on now will never change.
An ERP system integrates all your company data from across departments. That gives you the kind of top-down perspective on your present strengths and weaknesses that you need in order to successfully pursue new revenue sources. If it is feasible to develop new products/services, target new clients/customers, or move into new markets/industries, an ERP will reveal it.
Avoid major and minor disruptions
The saying goes that hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s especially true in the world of business. More than one frustrated executive will tell you that the forces that disrupted their company did not appear overnight but rather built up overtime.
In the same way that cloud ERP software helps you spot opportunities, it gives your perspective over the large and small issues that hold back your growth, trouble your team, disrupt your relationships with clients, and inhibit efficiency and productivity.
An ERP can’t help you eliminate the problems of the future, but it can help insulate you from them.
Go Mobile with an ERP System
The concept of mobility is about more than just tablets and smartphones. It is better understood as a challenge to the very idea of locality. Your business may have an address, but it is hardly the centerpiece of your operation. Contributions made remotely are essential to what you do, and they should be a full part of your data ecosystem.
With a cloud ERP system in place, stakeholders have full access to your data, and any changes they make are immediately visible to everyone in the organization. The future will require you to have exactly this kind of anywhere, anytime flexibility.
Streamline Operations
No matter what industry you occupy, you can expect capable competition to appear in the future. In order to rise to the top, you will need to take what you do best and find ways to do it faster, stronger, smarter, and more flexibly. Those kinds of process improvements are only possible with an ERP in place. Rather than relying on instincts, guesses, and trends, you can develop ideas based on accurate, current, comprehensive data.
The time to integrate an ERP is now. But finding and implementing the right one can take months or more. Don’t put your company at a disadvantage by delaying the search process any longer.
ERP Events in the UK and US
The Manufacturer runs Connect ERP, an event that lets you meet 1-2-1 with the major ERP vendors.
The next Connect ERP event in the UK is taking place on 23 November 2016 at the Jaguar Visitor Centre, Castle Bromwich. Click here for more info.
The next Connect ERP event in the US is taking place in April 2017. For more information or to register your interest in attending, email Tim Brown – [email protected].
