Why Small Businesses Need ERP, Too!

5/17/2011 at 3:34 pm by admin

Feeling like it might be time to invest in an enterprise resource planning for your small business? You’re not alone! In a recent guest article for Internet Retailing magazine, Dilip Popat explains that many small companies are realizing the benefits that ERP systems have to offer them.

“Alongside being open for business whenever and wherever customers want to shop, earning a customer’s business and loyalty increasingly depends on knowing your customers’ individual preferences – when they want to buy, what they want to buy, and what price they are willing to pay,” Popat writes.

Sure, you could try hiring a psychic or asking your customers to fill out surveys every time they shop to figure out that information, but by investing in business IT solutions, you stand a much better chance of actually gathering meaningful data that you can use to adjust your business practices until they offer consumers the perfect shopping scenario. In today’s world, it’s not enough to simply guess at what your customers might like. You have to know. And with the kinds of sophisticated ERP and business IT packages available on the market now, you have the tools to know for certain what steps you can take to better please your customers.

“Maximizing retail performance is also dependent on the ability to fine tune the balance between choice, product availability, and inventory cost – especially in fast-moving arenas like fashion retailing,” Popat continues. “And when it comes to delivering seamless cross-channel customer order management – order online and collect in-store or arrange for delivery, order in-store for home delivery, and so forth – or maximizing inventory management across multiple channels, then information and timing is all.”

According to a recent analyst report cited by Popat, as many as 84 percent of small businesses lament the fact that the various elements of running their operations aren’t as seamlessly integrated as they could be. Achieving connectivity between manufacturers, supply chain components and headquarters is a challenge for even the most seasoned business executives, but it must be completed before a business can successfully expand.

Now you get three guesses as to what might help businesses gather data and achieve connectivity – and the first two don’t count.

That’s right, businesses are discovering that ERP systems can hold the key to solving many of the problems they commonly face.

Until recently, many small businesses missed out on ERP solutions because they didn’t feel that the systems were appropriate for smaller models, “but retailers have been missing out on a critical IT opportunity because ERP has changed. Today’s next generation ‘out of the box’ retail-specific ERP solutions have evolved to become impressively scalable end-to-end retail platforms that deliver all the dynamic operational agility retailers need when it comes to generating competitive advantage,” Popat asserts.

If you’ve been hesitant about investing in ERP because you’re worried that the solution might not be suitable for your unique business, worry no more. Today’s ERP systems are totally customizable, easily scalable and available in packages that meet they needs of any business, large or small. With the unprecedented ability of technology to influence our daily lives, no business should be without the benefits of an ERP system.