A Starter Guide to ERP for Small Business

Welcome to our latest edition of newsletter. Through our series of newsletters, we have been trying to enunciate various dimensions of ERP software, like its uses, the problems it can solve, its implementation, various factors to consider while choosing an ERP software, how can an? ERP software help in lean production so on and so forth.

Our endeavor is to inform you about ERP software and finding out ways to solve your business challenges.

In pursuit of doing so, we suggest some cutting-edge tricks and techniques along with popular ERP software which can minimize your day-to-day business struggle. We hope that our efforts are worth putting it and it continues to help you in some way or the other.

Lot of things done and said for large enterprises, but we can’t ignore the importance of small businesses.

It is worthwhile to mention in this context that in US itself 99.9% businesses are small businesses, and they employ 61.7 million workers, which is 46.4% of all US employees.

Source- https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-statistics/#small_business_employment_statistics_section

These small businesses translate into a huge money.

This is only in the US. Collectively in the whole world, these numbers are going to be mind boggling!

Hence, it is important to talk about small businesses, their challenges, and how can technology help them to overcome their daily challenges.

In the scope of this blog post, we will limit our discussion to small businesses, their business challenges, and the role of ERP software for small businesses in combating those challenges.

What is an ERP Software?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a category of business management software that empowers organizations to centralize their business processes within a single unified system. The concept looks simple, but it is a transformative idea for many businesses, especially for small business.?

An ERP software solution has a collection of modules that seamlessly function within a unified database, serving as the ultimate repository of enterprise data.

There are various modules such as inventory management, human resources, and supply chain management, among others. Furthermore, it includes critical business functions such as sales, marketing, manufacturing, inventory control, etc.

Click here to know about ERP software in detail.

When Does Your Business Need an ERP Solution?

• Do you face difficulty in handling complexity due to increased data, transactions etc?
• Do you find it difficult to manage inventory?
• Do you want to streamline and automate your various business processes like R&D, production, and sales?
• Do you struggle with data silos?
• Does your industry have strict compliance norms and you want to ensure regulatory compliance?
• Do you operate in multiple location and want a centralized control?
• Do you want cost control and visibility into budget and expenses?
• Do you take long time to retrieve data and information?
• Do you feel accounting is complicated and time consuming?

If your answer is yes to even a single question, it is time that you must think about deploying an ERP software.

Challenges an ERP Software Can Solve

While challenges faced by organizations differ from company to company, yet an ERP system for small manufacturers can solve problems like:

Siloed systems – Organizations use various software for various tasks. They have different software for accounting, a separate one for customer complaints, one for production monitoring, another to track sales and the most loved spreadsheets.

They work perfectly well, but getting and collating data from all of these become a challenge. It takes a huge toll of time and efforts and often the result extracted cannot be 100% correct due to human errors.

Secondly, staff can waste its huge time in doing repeated work, missing out other important task in hand.? ?

An ERP software can remove the challenge of siloed systems and work as a central repository, enabling easy and real-time exchange of data. By automating various tasks, one can focus on more important work than investing time in mundane tasks.

?Lack of data visibility – Management needs data to plan. Without a clear visibility into finances, no one can plan financial strategy. Likewise, for production, sales and all the departments to go smooth and devise innovation, management needs insights to plan. Without ample and collated data, there can not be a well thought of planning.

An ERP for small business helps you to get ample data with full visibility into each department. ?This transparency leaves behind the decision on fluke and enables management to devise a well thought of strategy.?

Inefficient workflows – Without an ERP software, there are delays. The culprit often is workflow. In manual and disconnected maze of systems, data flow hampers, often delayed and sometimes goes to unauthorized person.

The small business ERP software, with its unified data repository and communication, helps to set workflows at every level, leaving no room for delay.

Disconnect with customers – You cannot connect with your customers if you rely on paper-based systems. Manual work can put your rapport with the consumer in jeopardy. You need a centralized CRM capabilities to record, mention, handle and respond your consumer efficiently.

An ERP offers incredible CRM capability, bridging the gap between the organization and consumers.

These are major problems that an ERP system for small business can solve for your business. For a small manufacturer or small business, solving these issues are very important. Hence, you need an ERP software which can be a partner in your growth mission.

How To Pick the Best One for Your Organization

Your business is growing. At this junction you need a balance of ERP software. A software which is not heavy on budget yet fulfils your requirement.

Also, the one which has ability to scale up as the time demands. Hence, you must consider following points before choosing an ERP software:

1. Pinpoint your requirement – Be specific and list down all your challenges that you want to solve with ERP system. Make a detailed list.
2. Compare various ERPs – Do your research. Compare various systems, find out pros and cons of various ERP systems.
3. Reputation and experience of ERP company – Scrutinized companies must be evaluated based on their reputation and experience. A company having good reputation and well experience can roll out ERP implementation faster and can provide future assistance easily. Hence, consider this before finalizing.
4. Costs- Of course, it is an important criterion for selection. Do a budget vs usability analysis of various ERP companies to finalize.
5. Implementation process- Think about implementation before making a deal. Some ERP systems are trickier to implement and take long time to implement. Along with implementation, consider the support offered by the companies.
6. Scalability – Does your selected ERP offer scalability as your business grows? Consider this as a criterion.

How can BatchMaster Help Small Businesses?

Smal businesses will struggle to flourish unless they adopt modern digital ways of business management. Hence, for them ERP system is a must. There is a myth that ERP software are useful for large industries. Small businesses need an ERP software as much as big or mid-sized businesses as they have almost same set of challenges, standards and compliances to follow.

Small businesses need an ERP system which is robust, easy to implement, easy on pocket, yet reliable.? BatchMaster is a vendor which offers a robust ERP for small businesses – BatchMaster Lite.

BatchMaster Lite is a cloud ERP for small businesses, hence easy on pocket.? It fits in all the requirements of a small process manufacturer and gives scope of scalability; hence you don’t need to run the race from scratch while scaling up. ?

With a fast implementation cycle of just 21 days, BatchMaster Lite offers all the core modules important for your business. Also, it can be integrated with various finance software.

Finding out a small business cloud ERP software which posses all the capabilities and qualities is difficult but given various choices, BatchMaster Lite can be the best pick.

Conclusion

Small businesses are helm of the economy. Their growth directly impact the economic eco- system of the world. Hence, it is paramount that they work effortlessly, deploy new technology and be robust enough to bear disruptions.

ERP for small businesses can help them to sway smoothly.? BatchMaster Lite is the most affordable solution designed especially keeping in view the needs of small process manufacturing businesses.

Not only it is robust, economic, and offers very minimum implementation cycle, it is backed up with trust and experience since it is an offering by BatchMaster.

BatchMaster has more than 30 years of experience in ERP implementation and has served to more than 3000 companies across the globe.

If you are a small process manufacturing organization, and looking for an ERP, visit BatchMaster Lite and to know more about the company visit BatchMaster.