It’s important to upgrade your ERP system as your business grows. Outdated systems have limitations that can hold you back. Whereas modern ERP software will streamline your processes and improve efficiency.
Choosing an ERP like NetSuite from the outset means that you don’t need to upgrade your ERP software every few years to accommodate your growth. In fact, scaling your business is made even easier with NetSuite as it has features that positively support your expansion.
Outdated Systems Fail You
Struggling on with a legacy ERP system that no longer meets your needs is a recipe for business failure. Systems like this hold you back and have shortcomings that could even be costing you financially.
If you have a very old legacy ERP system, it is more likely to be an on-premises solution that requires extensive upkeep – and the associated costs of server rooms and IT staff to maintain things. Software like this is likely to be based on older technology and could well have been patched and updated to such an extent that it just doesn’t run anywhere near as smoothly as it once did.
As you have grown, you may have cobbled together a number of different solutions, each meeting separate and quite different needs. Perhaps you started out with accounting software, then added a separate CRM solution, a marketing automation platform, an ecommerce system and so on. It’s highly likely that these will not have been specially designed to work with each other, so you will probably suffer from compromised speed and functionality.
Having disparate systems means lots of rekeying of information or manually checking and reconciling data. It entails the slow and laborious collating of figures from different systems when you want to see a quick snapshot of your business performance or to analyse where you stand so you can make a key strategic decision.
There is a good chance that your ERP software is based on a version of your company that no longer even exists. Putting up with its inefficiencies and limitations will only hold you back as you scale.
Modern ERP Solutions Support Your Scaling Business
Upgrading your ERP software to a contemporary system like NetSuite supports your business growth.
NetSuite is a cloud-based business management software system that provides a customisable suite of tools. A key feature is its integrated nature, which allows data to flow seamlessly between different departments or divisions of a company or business group.
Many routine tasks can be automated, which streamlines your business. For example, using automated business processes and workflows, you can automatically generate invoices when you receive an order. Your stock levels are updated when products are sold and reminders can be automatically sent to customers when their payments are due.
With this level of automation, tasks are performed without user input, saving time and manual effort, as well as providing greater assurance that there are no human errors.
This improves your efficiency, freeing up your staff’s time and sparing them from boring, manual tasks. Your approvals processes work faster and smoother, bringing greater productivity across all your admin-based workflows.
When you first progress from spreadsheet accounting, or move on from a basic accounting package, you may be a small company with only a handful of employees. As you grow, though, you start to form more distinct business departments. Here, NetSuite is perfect at unifying the processes across the company. With access to its single database, your employees can collaborate easily and, regardless of their department, everyone is working from the same information without needing to rekey data or open other software packages.
As you scale even more, NetSuite is there to take care of everything for you. It supports multiple languages and currencies, making it simple for you to trade across borders and to expand into new territories.
An ERP System You Can Rely on Forever
NetSuite has a wide range of functionality. It works across all your business departments – finance, accounts, sales, marketing, HR and customer services.
One of NetSuite’s strengths, though, lies in its many modules and add-ons that bring even greater functionality. From an operations point of view, this means there are options with more specialist features designed for warehousing and ecommerce, professional services and client management, and manufacturing and assembly.
This means that you never need to upgrade your ERP again. As you scale, you can add ecommerce and inventory management functionality, for example. Or you can add more specialist SuiteApps that further extend and enhance what your system can do.
NetSuite is perfect for startups as well as small and mid-size businesses. But its scalability means it also ably supports large companies and multi-national enterprises. It is used by more than 36,000 customers in 217 countries and territories across the world. And – without exception – it used by businesses across all industries.
You can rely on NetSuite forever. It will support you as you grow and take you from a small startup right up to enterprise level.
Don’t become shackled by the limitations of an outdated ERP system. Contact us today to find out how you can use NetSuite to power your growing business.
