Many organizations fail to realize the need for an ERP system because most businesses are unaware that their current operations are draining their resources. Others believe that as long as their current operations “work,” changes are not required.

At a Glance: A Common Business Scenario

For example, look into a typical order fulfillment trail. When a customer places an order, a sales representative will first record that order into their CRM software. Afterwards, that order begins a paper trail from the sales outbox to the accounting department’s inbox basket. As book keepers collect payments and re-enters the data into their Accounting Software, the paper trail continues to the warehouse’s inbox basket for the order’s final fulfillment stage. As the order is packed, shipped, and completed, warehouse workers manually update their Inventory Software and deliver the completed sales order to the customer service department’s inbox basket. Then again, a customer service representative will key in the completed sales order to their Customer Service (Help Desk) Software.

Data re-entry wastes an employee’s time and creates risks of typos and errors that will hinder the company’s operational process. First of all, tracking the source of the error will prove difficult because you would have to sift through the paperwork of each department. Also, imagine the steps you need to take when your customer received an incorrect item. You need to locate the incorrect sales order, backtrack the order to each department and make the necessary changes, then go through the paper trail once again to correct the sales order. Avoiding this mistake will prove difficult because each stages of order fulfillment are prone to human error.

What’s more, the lack of a single and unified system makes Order-Tracking difficult. A book-keeper cannot easily access the inventory software to see whether the shipment has been made. Similarly, a sales rep cannot easily access the accounting software to see if the sales order has been processed. This results in the common scenario where a call from a frustrated customer is transferred from department to department just to track a single sales order.

The scenario described above is still common in today’s businesses and can be avoided by implementing an ERP system. Because an ERP system unifies the business processes of all departments into one system, you can easily eliminate data re-entry and its errors while increasing customer satisfaction with better order-tracking.

“My company needs ERP to avoid this kind of inefficient business process. How do I get started?”

About Servora
Servora uses cloud computing technology to deliver CRM, ERP, Accounting, and Ecommerce applications via SaaS to small and mid-sized businesses.  See a list of solutions that Servora offers.