Your Technology Strategy: What Is An ERP?

As we work with small businesses to create their technology strategy, we get a common question: “What is an ERP?” The acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning can make many small business owners feel like an “Enterprise” solution is too big and complicated for their business. The truth is, an ERP can be an essential part of executing and automating their technology and business strategies. So, let’s start by answering that question.

What Is ERP In Simple Terms?

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution brings together many of the functions of any business: Sales, Marketing, Human Resources (HR), Finance, and Logistics (suppliers, supply chain, distribution). An ERP not only ties all of these functions together, but it can also automate functions, ensure data is consistent and shared, create a better system to communicate with customers, and much more.

What Does An ERP System Do?

An ERP enables your business to function as one cohesive unit across all the functional areas mentioned above. It has many benefits.

The benefits of an ERP for small businesses include the following:

1. Productivity: When data and communication flow across your business, it enables your team to get more done.
2. Efficiency: Get more done in less time.
3. Profitability: When you get more done in less time, that will reduce cost of goods and expenses and show up on your bottom line.
4. Simplicity: When systems aren’t connected (e.g. Sales > Marketing > Operations > Finance), it makes the whole system more complicated to manage. An ERP simplifies this.
5. Reporting & Analytics: The key to a successful business strategy is making adjustments as you go. Having the right (and correct) information is essential to making the best decisions, and an ERP provides the reports and analytics you need.
6. Empowers Remote Workers: An ERP gives homeworkers access to all of the functions, features, and communication they need, just as if they were in the office.
7. Compliance: As an ERP wraps your processes together, it will also help ensure that your business remains compliant, that one small break in compliance in one small area of your business doesn't create a compliance issue for the whole organization.

Where Does ERP Fit In My Technology Strategy?

After explaining how an ERP works and what it can do for a business, our clients then wonder how this might help their business, specifically. The answer is that it’s all about connecting their service (including production and delivery of a product) to their technology strategy. The purpose of developing a technology strategy is to ensure that the business uses technology to increase business performance, to help them achieve their business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). And that’s all in the execution of the strategy.

How Does ERP Help Me Execute My Strategy?

An ERP puts your technology strategy into practice by integrating the functional areas of your business. Then it helps you manage and monitor that plan so that you can make important decisions that affect your business and each area of the business, from sales to finance. Being able to run customized reports and analytics across functional areas of the business will be central to your strategic planning.

How To Implement An ERP

The next step here is to create your technology strategy. We start with your business goals and target KPIs. From there, we offer our expertise to help you utilize technology to enable your whole team to achieve those goals.

To begin that process, schedule a call with us

Contact us now