Axis Global Partners

4Signs you might need to upgrade you current business accounting software

It’s happens again and again. The phone rings and we get a call from a prospective client who sees the writing on the wall. Actually, not so much the writing, more the clock on the wall as they tell tales of the hours ticking away and their monthly close seeming like it will never end. Or perhaps the financial report that the CEO requested is taking hours to produce instead of minutes. Their current business accounting software is becoming the bottleneck to overnight success for their organization. The owners and CFO’s patience has reached critical mass – they’re as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore!

If you can empathize with this scenario, then you may be ready to join the growing numbers who need to take the next step, and upgrade to a more robust solution that will grow as the business grows. The economy is picking up and smart companies are looking to change, but alas, resistance is still strong.Many firms are still making the excuse that they can’t afford to move to something bigger due to cost, or perhaps there’s a little fear factor involved. After all, upgrading your accounting system can be a daunting prospect.

Here are four signs that you may be pushing your luck if you try to push the system envelope a little further:

1. Growing Customer Needs
Starting your business with a single location and a couple of sales reps meant your back-end systems accommodated small volumes of data, and customer lists were probably tracked and kept using spreadsheets, or basic contact management systems. The sales were good and your customer base increased; enough that the business decided to add new sales channels and plan out marketing campaigns. The ability to understand the buying patterns of your customer base and access the information from a central database was a core requirement, but the sales resisted and were happy and comfortable working with their current methods.

Don’t allow the tail to wag the dog – your customers are what have grown your company, so you need to have the ability to service your market and ensure customer relations are paramount. If you need to add a customer service organization, and more sales reps, then you must have the ability to manage the processes and data associated with these activities. That means you will need good order management and inventory control systems, and eventually a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

If your current system doesn’t accommodate these growth factors, then you will be losing sales to your competitors.

2. Collaboration Challenges
It’s a fact that small organizations will always try to extend the use of their management tools as much as possible.It’s also typical that over time new applications were introduced that solved their growth requirements, such as in-house custom development, or multiple spreadsheets. This solved the short-term need, but with the growth and complexity of the business came an increase in the support or management requirements. This limited their ability to see a picture of their overall business because there were so many islands of information that needed to be combined.

This proliferation of applications or custom solutions limits the ability to make well-informed decisions. By the time you have combined the data into a business report that can answer the question you are asking, the market has changed and you’ll need to start again. Your staff may now be wasting more time finding the right data instead of using the data to make the decisions necessary to beat the market.

If your current system doesn’t provide a way to give you an integrated and comprehensive picture across all your business units, your chances of making that informed decision are limited.

3. Spreadsheet Hell
As stated, a common way to solve new growth reporting requirements is to create a spreadsheet. Although the spreadsheet is an amazing tool that is simple to use and readily accessible, companies will often use them to supplement basic accounting systems.In a recent survey, 57% of small and medium sized firms said they still use spreadsheets to run their business. This has inherent elements of danger: little or no audit trail, calculation errors and ability to change the data easily, they lack collaboration, and low security.

If your current processes include heavy reliance on spreadsheets because you don’t get what you need from your software, then take a look at the benefits of upgrading to a more integrated system and realize reductions in operating and administrative costs.

4. Performance and Functionality Degradation
As your transaction volumes increases, so does the size of your database. If your volume is increasing, then you are probably adding staff to handle the orders and the number of users logged in to the system is increasing. As you add inventory, there will probably be a need to add additional descriptive fields, and so the complexity increases. The first time you notice there is an issue is when it takes forever to create a simple report, or perhaps some users get locked up in the system. You’ve hit the performance blockade, and solving this isn’t always simple.

If your current system has ‘maxed’ out, you will be losing sales because it takes too much time to take an order, or you have started to experience increased outages. Take a look at how many orders you are losing this way and you will be surprised at how much revenue just got lost in in that performance bottleneck.

The financial side of growing your business is critical to profitability and success, but today’s economy demands that this aspect is combined with real-time visibility across the entire company. Even a minimum amount of business process automation and integration can provide high productivity gains.

Still not convinced? If you would like to discuss your specific situation in more detail, then call the Axis Global Partners office closest to you and we’d love to hear from you!

Top 5 issues for SMBs to consider

Is the Cloud the answer?
The gas prices at today’s pumps will make any consumer stop in their tracks and wonder why they bought that big SUV. There will be intense family discussions about the value of keeping the vehicle, or if they should trade-in for a smaller, gas-conserving model or even go with a hybrid.

The comparisons are there with some of the management decisions that small and medium-sized companies are facing in today’s economy and what direction they need to take with their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. This is a market that has come under the microscope with the introduction of many cloud solutions, alleging to be the key when it comes to saving company dollars.

The ERP solution of ten years ago that was going to carry the company to business success mayor may not have realized its potential, but the marketing hype and glamor-ads of today all suggest that you will get more MPG with less work by moving to a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) alternative, placing your data and effectively your business in the legendary cloud.(There are really three options to consider; on-premise, hosted, and SaaS, but in this article we’re only looking to discuss on-premise versus Saas).

But is the reality that simple, or are there hidden considerations that can cause you to hesitate? “Once bitten, twice shy” so says the familiar idiom, and firms who had unpleasant experiences with their ERP project may not want to face similar upheaval and problems again.

It’s nice to have choices
Which model is right for your organization? What are the factors to consider when reviewing your options?  Here are 5 considerations that should help at least determine if a full assessment is needed.

1. How complex is your business?
   If you have a simple, vanilla business model then you will likely not require anything too unique that cannot be accommodated out of the box (or in this case out of the web). But if you have complex business processes then make sure that these can be adapted to a web application. You may already have implemented customizations to your on-premise system, and it can prove costly or impossible to get the same functionality from the SaaS offering, which may not be as flexible due to vendor standards. If it is early days for your business, and you haven’t defined too many processes, then adapting to the SaaS software best practices is probably the best route. As most ERP vendors provide both flavors (on-premise and SaaS), then if you find a competitive advantage later that requires some process complexity, then it may just be a natural growth progression to bring the system in-house.
2. How many locations do you need to manage?
   Small to mid-size companies should definitely consider cloud options. Typically, cost would be a consideration for these companies, and one of the benefits of SaaS is a lower startup cost. This would mean there would be reduced onsite infrastructure to be in place, just a reliable communications provider to enable access to the internet. Beyond mid-size, and for those companies who may have a number of diverse organizations under the same corporate guidance or globally may decide that an on-premise option suits their requirements better. Primary issues here are control of their data and applications, and the ever present security concern.
3. What level of IT skills and support do I have?
   If you have in-house IT staff, then it’s a matter of the level of skills they will have to undertake an implementation project, or how much time they are currently devoting to supporting the existing system. If you have a well-oiled machine, then your ongoing costs may already have stabilized. If you have none of this, or perhaps have your IT support outsourced, then the low cost of startup and ongoing support make the SaaS option attractive.
4. What level of integration with other systems?
   If you have specific applications that have been, or will control unique business processes, or have a need to customize or interface with legacy systems, then on-premise is a better option. It’s partly about what level of control you feel comfortable with, and partly a bandwidth issue. With specialization there could be large amounts of data involved, and therefore response times can be of concern.
5. Do you have high-availability requirements?
   Most online systems have high availability levels, and have taken steps to ensure redundancy is built into their network. But systems still go down, as Amazon experienced recently. From a local perspective, everything works great until you lose your internet connection. If you are in a business that demands 100% availability, then you can’t beat on-premise as you rely only on your own network and contingencies. The deciding factor here is how much revenue is at risk for every hour, or perhaps minute, that you are down.

One size does not fit all
When an IT question is asked, the answer is invariably, “It depends.” The cloud / on-premise evaluation is no different, and indeed there is even a case for the hybrid approach that can allow for exceptionally dynamic business needs. Don’t make the decisions in a vacuum. Seek outside counsel from business partners and consulting firms who specialize in guiding organizations through these types of projects, and make the right decision to match your business needs for the future.