When the holidays roll around, and you are buying gifts for family, friends, colleagues, and even for your pets, do you buy yourself a gift, too? Do you purchase a present for your company, like new carpeting or a new phone system? Those are all great gifts, but what I want to tell you is that the best gift of all is a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software solution for your company. And that is because…

ERP Software Is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

There are 12 nights of Christmas for gift-giving, eight nights of Chanukah, six nights of Kwanzaa. Any of those might seem remarkable. But when you treat your company to the gift of a new ERP software system, you are purchasing a gift that lasts much longer, a gift that keeps on giving 365 days a year for the foreseeable future. Let me count the ways…

The Gift of Enhanced Security

Modern ERP systems provide greater security via a wide range of measures aimed at protecting all your systems from illicit access, ensuring the accessibility and integrity of system-wide data. Modern security protocols keep pace with the shifting threat landscape and build shields around vulnerable endpoints. The cost of mitigating risk is negligible compared to the cost of a breach of any kind.

The Gift of Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory compliance can be complex and time-consuming, whether your company must meet the requirements of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), here at home the CCR (California Code of Regulations), or the requirements of a host of other agencies such as the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) or the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission). Due to the increasing number of regulations and the need for operational transparency, organizations are increasingly adopting the use of consolidated and harmonized sets of compliance controls. This approach ensures that all necessary governance requirements can be met without the unnecessary duplication of effort and activity from resources. Modern ERP software systems include tools for regulatory compliance.

The Gift of Increased Productivity

Productivity increases when you implement a modern, sully integrated ERP software solution because it eliminates duplicated data entry and automates other functions such as approvals and receivables (AR) collections.

The Gift of Increased Profitability

Profitability also increases because when productivity rises, costs decrease. You are not paying employees to do busy work and repetitive tasks that your ERP automates for them so that they can focus on the more essential tasks that products out the door in less time.

The Gift of Informed Decision Making

Modern ERP systems provide real-time access to key performance indicators (KPIs), inventory levels, financial reports, metrics-driven my Artificial Intelligence (AI), order status, and more. You can eliminate the guesswork and make informed business decisions with the actual, up-to-the-minute numbers you need.

The Gift of a Competitive Edge

It is not hard to understand that when you are running your business on the best ERP tools available on the market today, you have gifted yourself a competitive edge, with 360° visibility into your operations, financials, transactions, inventory, supply chain, market trends, and more.

The Gift of Better Financial Reporting Tools

Accurate financial reporting is the foundation of a thriving business. When those reports are available in real-time, you have gifted yourself the peace of mind and the confidence you need to make critical business decisions based on actual information and forecasting.

The Gift of Anywhere, Anytime Access

Modern cloud ERP solutions allow for secure access to your systems, reports, files, etc., anytime from anywhere, with access granted only to those users who have those permissions. It is really as simple as that.

The Gift of Enhanced Efficiency

Productivity and efficiency go hand in hand when you are running your business on modern, fully integrated, cloud-based ERP software. You achieve both productivity and efficiency when you automate repetitive tasks that your ERP handles in a fraction of the time that it takes a human to complete them.

The Gift of Inventory Management (IM)

Gone are the days when companies had to close their doors in order to conduct manual, time-consuming inventories, which in the end were less than accurate due to human error. Today, Inventory Management (IM) software, connected through your ERP system to your warehouse, shipping department, sales department etc., etc., automates that process according to the business rules you provide when the system is implemented.

The Gift of a Warehouse Management System (WMS)

The same is true for Warehouse Management (WMS), whether you use bar code scanners or RFID technology. Warehouses today are not just a jumble of products. They are designed for maximum productivity and profitability, for highly efficient receiving and shipping—product in, product out. Full stop.

The Gift of Better Supply Chain Management (SCM)

Effective Supply Chain Management (SCM) has become a prickly issue due to the pandemic. And while even the best SCM software could not have freed the container ship stuck in the Suez Canal, it could have given you a real-time report on the options available for circumventing the crisis, with the shipping time and freight costs for each option. The same is true for the pandemic-related supply chain disruptions around the world.

The Gift of Shop Floor Routing

Shop floor routing (or re-routing as the case might be) is a critical function of every manufacturing software solution worth its salt. When your routing is automated, optimized, and flexible, then production marches forward, and your products flow out the door in a timely fashion—one less headache for your operations team to deal with.

The Gift of an Infinitely Deep BOM (Bill of Materials)

And speaking of operations, you have every right to want manufacturing software that will accommodate your Bill of Materials (BOM), no matter how deep it might be. The right ERP software will manage every BOM you throw at it.

The Gift of Predictable Costs

Ah. This is a great gift that I am sure your CFO would appreciate. Cloud ERP software solutions are purchased as a subscription. So, the monthly per-user cost is totally predictable, and no surprises and no costly upgrades. It’s all part of subscription pricing.

The Gift of 360° Visibility

You cannot fix what you cannot see. So, in a nutshell, visibility into all your financial and operational statistics on a real-time basis, accessed anytime from anywhere, is a wondrous gift for all of your managers and executives.

In Summary

We have used many of the exact words multiple times in our list of ERP gifts: productivity, efficiency, profitability, optimization, automation. Strengthen that list of words with a few more, such as: Business Intelligence (BI), Machine Learning (ML), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Whether the best ERP software solution gift for your company is Microsoft Dynamics or Infor, the team here at Strategic Systems Group (SSG) has the knowledge, experience, and wherewithal to implement, maintain, and support your gift so that it keeps on giving, year in and year out.

The next step is easy…

Contact Strategic Systems Group (SSG) for more information. We can be reached at (310) 539-4645 or via our contact form. We would love to meet with you either in person or virtually. We would love to have the opportunity to prove our mettle. We also think that quite simply, you will like us!

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