How Can My Business Save Money With ERP?

Is your company thinking of implementing an ERP system? Like a number of companies if your company is suffering from poor communication between departments, data inconsistencies and productivity problem then the chances are you will probably have considered an ERP system as a possible solution.

A good ERP system will be able to carry out many of the mundane logistics and manufacturing tasks for you which means that you don’t have to employ as many staff. ERP can carry out a number if tasks including such as three way matching of purchase orders and costing reports to name a few. An ERP system can also track the quantity of stock and make recommendations as and when required. For example, an ERP system can track the number of each item being used in the manufacturing line every day and match it up with the quantity of that product that the company has in stock. It can then use this information to work out when the stock will run out and when more stock should be ordered in order to keep the manufacturing line running smoothly. This results in a more productive manufacturing line thus helping you to get your products out faster, get money into your business quicker and move onto your next order earlier!

The benefits of ERP go further than just saving you money but if you are looking at implementing an ERP system here are a few tips to help you implement a system which will help you save the most money:

When buying an ERP system:

The prices for most of the ERP systems out there are based on the price of the user licence and as a general rule, the cheaper the licence on an ERP system, the cheaper the price of the software and the maintenance for the ERP software. Look for a system which has a good price on the ERP licence. Like many other companies, Software vendors have targets which they must meet at the end of the fiscal year, if you are in a position to be able to wait for this period then you will most likely be able to get a much better deal. It is also a tendency to get lost within all the different maintenance plans and spending more than you budgeted for. Make sure you purchase the plan that will benefit you the most and avoid features which would only provide an additional luxury feature. It would be a good idea to analyse the proposal that you are given by the ERP manufacturer to make sure that no additional services have been sneakily added to it.

Prior to an ERP implementation:

You will now be able to benefit from a fresh start so take this as an opportunity to remove any unwanted data as this will help to improve productivity which will save you a lot of time in the long run. The chances are most of your data will be on a Word processing system as Microsoft Word and on a Spread sheet program such Microsoft Excel and most companies will have the resources to be able to handle these basic programs.

During an ERP Implementation:

If you have a large of data that needs to be transferred over to the new system and do not have the resources, many good ERP systems have a migration service and since you are purchasing the ERP system from them they normally offer this at quite a reasonable price which is much cheaper than hiring another external company to carry out you data migration tasks. Make sure you have a change management plan set in place as changing inevitably occur in all organisations and it is much more difficult and costly to implement any changes after the system has been implemented.