Article Contributed by Penelope Edwards
When a business starts out their software requirements are fairly limited, probably only needing to use basic office packages for word processing and accounting. As the business grows the need for more sophisticated inventory and order management systems arises and these are added into the IT mix. Later on still, the need to scale and grow means that the business expands into additional sales channels, each one requiring another software solution and further increasing the complexity of integration between business processes. All of a sudden the businesses IT systems are looking a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. All cobbled together from different disparate software packages that don’t quite fit together, absolutely riddled with inefficiencies.
Does this sound anything like your current setup? I know the prospect of unpicking this mess and changing systems is daunting to say the least. It’s easy to rest on your laurels and claim ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. But you could be losing out on a huge amount of time, money and ultimately scalability, due to badly architected systems that have organically evolved on the basis of short term thinking.
Here are four problems that might kick-start you into taking the plunge into the efficiencies and longer term scalabilities that come from implementing an integrated business management software solution.
1) Buying, maintaining, and upgrading multiple different software packages is not cheap.
You’ll need to shell out for multiple licences, as well as pay someone with the experience and skills to work will all of these different packages. Add in the cost of integrating them so that they can share data and whoa nelly things are starting to look pretty pricey. Any integration will need maintenance too; possibly every time one of the software vendors releases an update. This IT resource could be used elsewhere to improve productivity or just eliminated to save cost and improve your bottom line.
2) Often you won’t be able to fully join together different software packages as they will be too dissimilar to make integration possible.
This means that your staff will need to waste valuable time re-entering information into multiple packages. The likelihood of human error is also increased meaning all your data is more inaccurate. This re-entry of data takes your staff away from using this time in more beneficial ways for your business, such as generating more income. Look at it this way if 5 people save 30 minutes per day, and there are roughly 252 working days in a year, then you’re wasting a whopping 630 hours annually that could be put to more productive use.
3) Waiting for data to be passed between numerous separate systems, which is both an error-prone and time-intensive process, results in critical decision making being slow and choices being made on the basis of inaccurate analytics.
Important business decisions are therefore often too late to have the most effective impact or could actually be detrimental to your business.
4) A lack of quick and efficient processes will affect customer satisfaction as well.
If you have poor integration and lengthy transfer processes between your software systems you are unlikely to be able to gain instant access to the information you need to service them well. Order information, inventory levels, order status, billing history and more will not be easily accessible. This leads to a poorer customer experience so they won’t buy from you again and even might be prompted to about you negatively to others.
The best time to get an integrated system in place and avoid the issues of managing multiple systems is now (or as soon as possible!). It’s never too late or early. Getting the right system will help you to scale as you’ll be more efficient and have more time to grow your business.
About the Author
Penelope Edwards works at Brightpearl – business management software for small businesses integrates inventory, accounting, CRM, order processing with sales channels. Run your website, physical shop and online marketplace listings from a single back end system. Sell more, and sell better.