If you built your business using entry-level business solutions (like Quickbooks) then you know they can be great for starting out. But as you grow, the daily operations of your business become more complex than generic business software can handle.
Maybe you’re struggling to meet increased demand and keep up with order entry. Maybe your inventory management is monopolizing your time. Or you're overwhelmed with paperwork for your manufacturing or service and repair processes.
How do you know it's time to upgrade from your current business software? Here are 6 telltale signs:
- Your business is growing and complexity is increasing
- Your processes are inefficient
- Your reports seem to be getting more and more inaccurate
- Your current reporting processes are disorganized or cobbled together
- You need customization and options specific to your business
- Your system needs more security and backup
ERP Readiness Self-Assessment
Is your business ready for an ERP?
Answer eight quick questions to see how ready your operations are to scale, identify key areas of friction, and receive a personalized readiness scorecard.
Start the Assessment8 questions · 3 minutes
Your ERP readiness level
Reactive
Operations depend too heavily on memory and heroics.
Score
15/32
Readiness
47%
Review
6
Sample scorecard
Complexity is increasing.
While you once managed things with one or two employees, your company's workflow is now a multi-step process involving many people and departments.
You're struggling to meet increased demand and keep up with core business tasks like order entry, inventory management, manufacturing, or service and repair processes using the limited functionality of the systems you already have.
Your processes are inefficient.
Your staff is bogged down with duplicate entry and manual processes in multiple systems.
"Busy-work" has become way too big a part of the day for your business. You've built workaround steps to create processes that incorporate multiple systems.
Because of the lack of integration, everything feels like it takes longer than it should and you've lost track of the number of times you've sat down at your desk thinking, "didn't I just do this?"
Your data is probably inaccurate (but how would you know?)
Because you're working from multiple systems and you have no way to audit or track your data, you have little confidence in your data's accuracy. In fact, financial reports seem to be getting more inaccurate and less comprehensive as the workarounds to connect your different systems become more and more complex and cumbersome.
You need more or different reports.
Different locations or team manage their business data in different ways, making it difficult to understand your financial position and how the organization is doing overall. Disparate systems make any sort of advanced reporting impossible.
You need more customization.
You are unable to build your systems specifically for your business, even though you want to create real-time, custom reports for improved business workflow. You know what reporting you need to see, you just don't know how to make your system generate it.
It can feel like every system you have is a temporary fix that will do for now, but you're struggling to develop a strategic approach to your systems that will help get you where you need to be.
Security is difficult to navigate.
You have multiple users in multiple departments who need access to varying pieces of information, but you are unable to give them different access levels because your systems don't let you create customizable user permissions.
You either have to give more access to your employees than they need, which can create some confidentiality challenges internally, or you have a few employees who become the bottlenecks since all request need to go through them.
It could be time for an ERP system.
ERP software acts as a single system, creating streamlined workflows for your team and giving you visibility into your business.
With Koble:
- You'll spend less time managing your data
- You'll gain confidence in your numbers
- You'll be set up to make informed business decisions that help you build and grow
Still unsure? Take our self assessment, Are You ERP Ready? 8 questions to help you identify if it's time to upgrade to ERP. Or call for a FREE 15-minute evaluation. We’ll take the time to learn about your business so we can help set you up for ERP success.
"If you want continued growth, you want to be in a system that still has room to grow with you and stay with you, rather than one that you’re just trying to keep alive and keep running. And if it’s giving you bad information, you won’t be able to make good decisions.
Not only would we have struggled to keep up with growth that we’ve experienced, I don’t think we would have been able to do it at all without Koble. Koble has allowed us to manage it all with reliable and consistent measurement.”
Brian Esh is the Director of Professional Services at Koble. He is passionate about following Jesus and helping small businesses grow. Brian has spent nearly a decade working with numerous business leaders to facilitate growth by putting software to work. When not working, Brian enjoys competitive sports and spending time with his wonderful wife and four children.
