How To Choose The Best ERP

 

How To Choose The Exact ERP Solution For My Small Business

There are plenty of ERP developers on the market today, offering many different products. Choosing the optimal solution might be a tough task. You should know that once you buy and implement an ERP system, your company gets married to it!
It is a big headache, waste of time and extremely expensive if you decide that “to divorce it”, because you don't like it, it's not working for you or you simply want to change it with another product. That's why the wise choice in the beginning of the ERP project is extremely important. Not to mention that the implementation could take from 1 to several years to be completed. It would be a complete loss, if after this period you decide to throw away the software and the time invested in it.




Here are some basic things you should take care of:
  • Make sure that your ERP vendor is the one you want to have for the next several years. Check their history and what their other clients say about them. Established brands like SAP, Microsoft, etc. are usually less risky but more expensive. It's up to your company's budget, but saving from quality in the long run is an extremely bad idea. Remember that the investment in the ERP is a long-term one.
  • Watch custom demos with exact cases from your business. For example, if you are a manufacturer, you might want to know and see a demo on managing bills of materials, how the cost of the products will be determined, how a big sale order will affect the production process and so on. If you are not sure about how some part of your business will be implemented in the software ask the vendors to demonstrate it. A good ERP system should cover your entire business.
  • Some developers offer TBB (Try Before Buy) type of deals. This means, that you can have a test drive of the ERP software, and see exactly how it functions. This will not give you the whole picture, which you can get only after the successful implementation, but at least you can get a valuable first impression and the feel of the software. There are also "money back guarantee" offers, but sometimes they are misleading and you should know the exact circumstances under which this offer is made.
  • Since many times, small ERP companies are closer to their clients, it is more probable that you will be the dominant side of the deal. The smaller they are, the more important each client is for their survival and growth. You will hardly be able to persuade Microsoft to change something in their software, because of the way you do it in your company. It would be easier to get this from a smaller developer for which you make for example 5 % of his revenue. The risk involved here is greater though.
  • Having a user friendly interface is really important, because the more “unfriendly” an ERP software is, the less your employees will want to and will be able to use it properly. The ERP system should cover all of your company's departments, so your employees will have to work with it, no matter if they like it or not. If they don't, or it is difficult to do something simple with the software, in most cases, they won't do it, or even if they do, it probably will not be done properly. At the end, you will find yourself with incomplete information for this department. It is a good idea for the department managers to participate in the process of choosing the ERP software. On the other hand, if the software is extremely user friendly, then most probably it is less functional. Usually, the simple things are less functional (not always but in most cases). So we recommend you that you stay somewhere in between.
  • Flexibility - the more flexible the software, the better it is. If your company doesn’t have a standard business structure or processes, you should find a flexible solution that fits your specific needs. There are systems which work only with standard structures and processes.
  • Security - ERP software collects and manages all the data in your business. Preserving this information from unauthorized access is crucial. As the data is stored in a common database, it is important that none of your employees have access to important information, which doesn’t concern them. For example, the merchants should not have access to company's human resources information, or in some cases, they should have access to the quantities of the products in stock, not know their value. It is important that every single person could have only access to the data she needs and manages want to.

Depending on your small business' needs, you should determine what is the more important to you, and why you want to have an ERP system. Depending on that, you should specify which of these points is more or less important for you. There are no perfect systems so, you have to set your priorities.

 

 

 

* Email
First Name
Last Name
* = Required Field
Mass Email You Can Trust