As 2013 rings in, this is an excellent time to take the next step in building the foundation to help your business grow this year and into the future. Implementing an ERP system is a big step – and will take an investment of time and money – but the payoffs can make profound changes for you and your employees.

Better information that can transform your business

With an ERP system, you can look at information across the business from different perspectives. Perspectives that could change the way you do business, like:

• Comparing revenues and fully loaded costs for each client to determine which customers are your most profitable.
• Looking at your inventory by volume and margin every week, to see which products should get the most shelf space.
• Analyzing purchases from vendors across all your locations so that you can consolidate purchases to get volume discounts.

Consistent business standards

Customers expect consistent service from everyone in your organization. Without consist information, employees have to make guesses and go searching for confirmation. Share information and standardize processes for reliable results, like:

• Ensuring that special orders don’t get lost using automated workflow,
• Having customer history at your employee’s fingertips – even in the field,
• Providing the correct answer to customer questions the first time and every time.

Optimize employee productivity

The accounting program and spreadsheets that you have used in the past keep your people focused on administrative tasks instead of giving you their best work. To grow the business effectively and remain competitive in today’s economy, you need to automate manual processes to focus employees on income producing activities. They will help you more by:

• Looking for trends in sales data instead of entering data in two separate systems,
• Finding ways to consolidate and streamline warehouse functions rather than counting inventory,
• Making more deliveries each day instead of filling out reams of paperwork by hand.

Isn’t it time for you to take your business to the next level. This is a great time to consider all the ways that ERP can fuel your growth.