The Definitive Guide for Choosing Business Management Software - CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2 - WHEN DO I NEED AN ERP?

SUMMARY

You realise that you need an ERP when a series of circumstances begin to accumulate and negatively affect how your company operates. We review the most common warning signs and explain why there never seems to be a good time to start searching the market for the right tool. Our first recommendation is a reassuring one.

KEY IDEAS

• There are many warning signs that indicate you urgently need a business management tool.
• The chances of choosing the right product, provider, technology and price are remarkably low.
• Our first recommendation is not to panic and to understand that a poor decision can have serious consequences for the company.

HELP, I NEED SOFTWARE! You know it. The management of your company is getting dangerously close to complete chaos. Daily operations are not systematised. Customers are not receiving products or services as quickly as they should. The invoicing process is becoming more complex by the day. Regulatory and tax changes are causing additional and considerable headaches. Information is not centralised. Your sales team uses slow and inefficient tools. You do not have the right information to make strategic decisions. You are unable to plan resources properly. Your growth prospects are severely limited. Your current technology is no longer compatible with the tools you purchased far too many years ago... In short, you are losing control of the company.

And let us admit it: choosing an ERP, a CRM or any other management tool is extremely daunting. The process will be long, and it may take months before the investment starts delivering benefits. The employees who will have to use the new system will initially resist it and, as if that were not enough, you will never be completely certain that you have made the right decision. You need to choose the right product and provider, at a fair price and with technology that will not become inadequate within a few years, while also avoiding an unnecessarily large and complex system. Unless your IT provider closes down or tells you they are retiring, the ideal time to start looking at alternatives never seems to arrive.

The temptation to close this guide at this point is strong. We know. But that is precisely why we wrote it. Nobody said it would be easy.

On the one hand, companies purchase solutions of this kind relatively few times. A person will also go through this process only a handful of times during their professional career. Furthermore, technologies change so much between one implementation and the next that much of the previous experience becomes difficult to reuse.

On the other hand, it is important to consider the consequences and what having this new software will mean for the organisation. A great deal may be expected from it, but it will also create a considerable dependency. And remember: we will not only depend on the product itself, but often also on the company providing the services, whether they involve consulting, training, development or hosting.

Therefore, TIP NUMBER 1: stop thinking about choosing the software quickly and getting it up and running within a few days or weeks. Not because this is impossible—it may be achievable in some cases—but because of the consequences you may face afterwards, which are far from advisable.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 1: Choosing business management software is always a headache. This guide is the aspirin that will help you deal with it.