ERP capabilities for small and medium-sized businesses
When it comes to management systems or ERP for small and medium-sized companies, the best option is to combine the strength of a nationally and globally known technology platform with features that match different company profiles. Besides, undoubtedly, presenting an excellent cost-benefit ratio. This is an investment value that matters for small and medium-sized companies.
And why a management system or an ERP
As the name suggests, ERP is a technology platform software that allows you to organize, monitor and manage your business processes and activities. From cash control to supplier orders. From sales history to payroll. From logistics to production. ERP centralizes your business information and allows you to identify errors more simply and quickly, anticipate needs, reduce waste, and automate day-to-day activities.
Ultimately, a management system automates the company’s activities and guarantees the reliability of the information obtained, which means making decisions with greater security.
Four essential points in ERP for small and medium-sized companies
TCO compliant
The first aspect is accessibility. There is no point in ERP being a management miracle if the so-called total cost of ownership (TCO) is high, making SME operations more expensive or even impractical to adopt. TCO is total financial cost. In other words, all necessary direct and indirect costs: software, hardware, services, maintenance, etc.
complete solution
It is common for you to find solutions limited to carrying out the administrative activities of your business. However, it is essential to select an ERP that can be applied to production processes, supplier management, logistics, inventory, sales and marketing.
easy to implement
It is closely related to TCO. It should be a ready-made platform that is already being used by companies of your size and possibly your type of business. When you decide to adopt, the implementation process should last several days or weeks.
convincing basis
How many users does it have? How many companies does it adopt? How is the service? partner? How many are there? Always remember: if thousands of companies adopt the solution and they have a network of hundreds of partners, it is undoubtedly a “future-proof” platform. The worst thing in the world is to invest money, time, and effort into a solution and then be left stuck in limbo.
Apart from these questions, it is also necessary to analyze the basic functionalities. So that you can manage your company with ease, quick access to information and greater intelligence and security in decision making, we can list six of them: financial management, customer and sales management, purchasing and stocks, production. Planning, commercial analysis, and reporting.
Also Read: Top 7 Benefits of Implementing ERP Software for Your Business
Understanding the main features of a management system for SMEs
Financial Management in Small and Medium Enterprises
These are the central capabilities of your ERP, which will provide you with the tools to manage and streamline your financial operations and automate everyday accounting, calculation, and transaction tasks. Additionally, depending on the solution, it will give you a real-time view of your cash flow and financial and future sales requirements. Main features are:
- Accounting – Automates key accounting processes such as journal entries, accounts receivable and accounts payable.
- Control – allows you to accurately manage cash flow, monitor fixed assets, control budgets, and monitor project costs.
- Simplified real estate management, virtual real estate function frees you from frequent manual postings.
- Banking and Reconciliation – This allows you to instantly process bank reconciliations, bank statements and payments using a variety of methods including checks, cash and wire transfers.
- Financial reporting and analysis – generating standard or custom reports from real-time data for business planning and audit reviews.
Customer and Sales Management in SMEs
To efficiently manage the entire sales process and customer lifecycle thus increasing sales and profitability and ensuring customer satisfaction.
- Sales Management – To control opportunities and manage sales activities.
- Marketing campaign management – creating, managing and analyzing marketing activities.
- Customer management – storing and organizing information about relationships with each customer.
- Service Management – Managing after sales. In other words, register and respond to service calls more effectively.
- Reports and Analytics – To generate your reports, such as sales forecast, stock, production and many more.
Buy and Stock in SME
Small businesses also demand systematic purchasing control, from requesting quotations from suppliers to creating purchase orders and making payments to suppliers.
- Purchasing – Generate purchase requests, orders and trade receipts; Link purchasing documents and view document trails for audit purposes; And manage returns, additional expenses and multiple currencies.
- Master Data Management – Manage detailed data and view detailed merchandise purchase information including balance sheets, price lists and tax information.
- Integration between warehouse and accounting – real-time synchronization of goods receipt and warehouse stock levels.
- Payable invoices, cancellations and processing invoices
- Reports updated in real time
Production Planning for Small and Medium Businesses
Set of features that allows you to get accurate information about incoming and outgoing orders, stock and item location.
- Inventory and warehouse management – Managing inventory using different cost models, units of measurement, and prices.
- Warehouse space management – managing and optimizing stock movement.
- Control of entry and exit of goods – registration of entry and exit of goods and inventory of stocks.
- Production and materials planning – control and issuance of production orders; Material price control.
commercial management
Apart from managing activities and opportunities, it gives you an intelligent view of business strategy. In other words, create your performance indicators and allow you to understand how each product line performs in real time.
Analysis and Reports
Organize all the information you consider important to understand, monitor and manage your business and enable you
- Eliminate duplicate data entry, costs and related errors.
- Create workflow-based alerts
- Automated responses to conditions that are detected
- Trigger automated responses when security incidents occur.
Let’s say you need to improve the visibility of your business or prepare to grow within a “no-surprise management” approach. In that case, consider implementing or updating your ERP to a platform that keeps pace with your growth and profitability challenges.
Also read: What is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)?