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Learn what aACE can do for your business in our February webinars. This month, we’ll be changing things up a little with two tracks of webinars! Those just getting to know aACE can join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon ET, when we’ll be kicking off a new cycle of webinars starting from the very beginning with aACE Basics. Those who are already familiar with aACE — or those who are just eager to skip ahead! — are welcome to join us on Thursdays at 12 noon ET, when we’ll be starting at the midpoint of our webinar cycle with Inventory Replenishment Management.

Worried about missing a presentation? Don’t be! Our webinar cycle will repeat on both tracks, so if you miss a webinar on a Tuesday you can catch it again on Thursday in just a few weeks.

Track 1

February 4th — aACE Basics

If you’re brand-new to aACE, this is the webinar for you! Learn how aACE’s system-wide conventions make it easy for new users to interact with the solution. Check out our video before the presentation to get a sneak peek at aACE’s user-friendly design.

February 11th — Managing Transactions / Purchase Orders

aACE makes it easy to track each step of a transaction, giving you the peace of mind that comes from having one solution manage every aspect of a sale or purchase. We’ll explore how users manage transactions in aACE using the Purchase Orders module as our example.

February 18th — Sales Leads and CRM App

Your sales team is moving fast to keep your customers and prospects engaged, and they need a solution that can keep up – even when they're on the go. See our CRM App in action and learn more about how sales leads move through aACE. Check out our sales leads and CRM App feature highlights for a sneak peek before the presentation.

February 25th — Sales Orders

See aACE's sales order, drop shipping, and special order workflows in action and learn how aACE makes each of those workflows a breeze. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight for a preview of some of these topics.

Track 2

February 6th — Inventory Replenishment Management

Ensure you always have the right number of products at the right time with aACE's smart inventory replenishment tools. Whether you’re ordering products from a vendor or manufacturing them for stock, aACE can help ensure you always have enough to meet consumer demand. To get a sneak peek at one aspect of this powerful feature, check out our feature highlight on reorder management.

February 13th — Shipping and the aACE Pick App

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight.

February 20th — Accounting Basics

Explore aACE’s GL Accounts module and learn how aACE makes it easy to print financial statements, navigate the general ledger, reconcile bank statements, and more. This webinar is very audience-driven, so come early and bring questions!

February 27th — A/R and A/P

Take a deeper dive into aACE’s accounts receivable and accounts payable features. We’ll review the tracking, delivery, and follow-up tools in the Invoices and Purchases modules. We’ll also explore customer and vendor payments, deposits, and scheduling recurring transactions.

We look forward to seeing you in our webinars! Register now to reserve your spot.

Change isn’t easy for a lot of people, and since companies like yours are made up of people, it’s likely your organization is resistant to change, too.

Think about when your company started. There was a small team that worked together to meet goals. Each person called on their own experience and knowledge to create processes to accomplish tasks. As your company grew, those processes got passed on to new hires, who adapted and changed as the company evolved. Eventually, those processes became a hodgepodge of approaches tied together by a common goal — to get the job done.

Over time, those adapted processes can miss important components and lack efficiencies, but if they work, and they keep your workflows going, few people take time to adjust and try new strategies.

Or worse yet, someone suggests a "new" or "improved" way to do something, only to have the new method ultimately cause headaches and more work for your team, thereby decreasing the receptiveness to future changes.

When something seems to work, even if it’s not at peak efficiency, who has time to focus on change and improvements? Your team should, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Management (BPM) software can help.

ERP and BPM are game-changers for businesses of all sizes. That’s why there is a growing market for the technology — a market that’s expected to reach almost $80 billion by 2026.

ERP and BPM streamline and automate your work processes, and then align and integrate your key operational components into a single system — from sales and marketing, product planning and development, to billing and accounting, human resources, and much more.

Let’s look at some benefits of ERP and BMS, the behind-the-scenes tech that keep your business going:

1. Insight Into Your Big Picture for Business

If you’re managing your business operations with disparate systems, word-processing documents, and spreadsheets, you’re not able to quickly and accurately get instant insight into your comprehensive business picture. ERP and BMS can radically change how you make business decisions.

By integrating your core workflows and processes into a single platform, you can get instant visibility into all the core components of your operations so you can make better business decisions. In one study of small and medium size businesses (SMBs) that adopted an ERP solution, 48% said they had gained real-time visibility into all of their data.

Do you have audits or regulatory or compliance reporting mandates? ERP and BMS can help you quickly pull your needed information for review and analytics significantly faster than manual processes.

2. Increased Technical Security for Your Business

Disparate systems mean a lot of extra work for your IT and cybersecurity teams. Every software program and application needs to be assessed and protected for vulnerabilities. There are lots of product updates to do and related equipment to track. By using a single platform for business management, you remove some of the work from your IT team so they have fewer applications to manage and protect, which decreases your cybersecurity risks of hacking or exploitation overall.

You can further decrease your organization’s cyber risk by adopting a cloud-based ERP or BMS solution. Moving to the cloud reduces the number of on-premise requirements for your operational workflows and processes, further freeing up resources for your IT team.

3. Improved Efficiencies and Time Saved

Those hodgepodge processes your organization likely uses on a daily basis? They’re probably not that efficient. Oftentimes your team does repetitive manual tasks, like duplicating data into multiple systems or spreadsheets across your organizations. ERM and BMS software means you can enter data once and have it accessible across all of your work processes—from marketing to sales and from manufacturing to product delivery, billing, and payment management. This means improved efficiencies across your organization, time saved for your staff, and ultimately happier employees who don’t feel bogged down by unnecessary tasks.

In the ERP study we mentioned earlier, 77% said they were able to standardize their back-office processes compared to 22% without an ERP, and these businesses experienced almost a 40% decrease in the time it takes for them to make business decisions.

4. Workflows With Standard Operating Procedures

Most operations rely more on people than processes to get the job done. That comes with a lot of inefficiencies. The way one employee does a task on one shift may be completely different than the way another employee does the same task on a different shift. Add that up for all of your employees and all the tasks that have to be accomplished within your organization and before you know it, you have slow, inefficient processes that are prone to human error.

ERP and BMS software allows you to standardize processes — and in many cases automate them — based on your company’s best practices. Not only will that speed tasks up, but it also reduces the opportunity for humans to make errors, further making your processes more reliable and more efficient.

5. Cost savings

ERP and BMS platforms can create significant cost savings for your organization. We mentioned earlier that cloud-hosted platforms can improve your cybersecurity stature. Cloud solutions can also save you money, increase your organizational flexibility, and create opportunities for scalability as your organization grows and changes. Cloud solutions can also help you adopt more robust ERP and BMS platforms that your small teams may otherwise have difficulty maintaining.

But beyond the cloud, these systems can bring other cost saving measures to your organization by eliminating unnecessary software, freeing up staff time, and automating manual tasks. On average, organizations with an ERP can experience about 11% reduction in operational costs and are four times more likely to be able to forecast and plan for future demand.

6. Collaboration Across Departments

One often overlooked benefit of adopting an ERP or BMS solution is the unity it can bring to your workforce. Instead of having disparate systems that aren’t accessible by the masses, your BMS can give the right people the right insight into your operations, no matter where they are. This insight – especially those configurable dashboard and reports — give everyone a clear picture of how well your business is doing, where there are gaps, and where you can make improvements.

Are you ready to increase the speed and accuracy of your daily operations? Join an aACE webinar today to find out how you can seamlessly integrate your sales, operations, and accounting into one easy-to-use solution. Start promoting better collaboration across your entire organization, improve efficiencies and ultimately grow your bottom line.

Your relationships with your potential, current, past, and future customers are the foundation of your company’s success. How you engage with them along the buyer’s journey will form the relationships and loyalties you have over time, which ultimately influences your company’s success and bottom line.

Traditionally, customer relationship management (CRM) was driven exclusively by your sales team. A potential customer connected with your organization, and then a sales team member responded and worked hard to forge a relationship. Answered questions. Demoed products. Made call after call. Maybe even had a couple of meetings in person.

All the information exchanged during those engagements were likely stored somewhere between the sales person’s brain, his or her computer, notes on a desk, and maybe, eventually some type of sales system used by your organization.

Today, digital CRMs are changing the way companies do business. Gone are pen and paper tracking, contact lists stored on desks and computers, and lost emails and connections if a person is out sick or leaves your company.

A CRM handles all your contact information and related sales processes. It gives your team insight into where your customers are on their journey, who has communicated with them, what’s been communicated and how, and what’s needed next.

And while CRMs bring a lot of flexibility and scalability to your organization, your staff doesn’t always embrace them with open arms – and even those with the best intentions don’t always use the solutions to their full capacity.

Why? Well, because some CRMs can be difficult to use and it can be challenging to get your sales team to buy in to all the benefits. Here are 7 common mistakes organizations make when adopting a CRM system and why you should avoid these missteps so you can enjoy the full benefits for your organization:

1. Selecting a CRM off a sales pitch, not one that works for your business goals

If you’re in sales, marketing or organizational leadership, it’s likely you’re constantly targeted by ads and messaging about the next great CRM. Random emails show up in your inbox asking if you can take a call or if you have a few moments to watch a demo. If you’re frustrated by inefficiencies in your current sales processes, it’s easy to bite on all the flash and glamor.

This is a starting point for CRM failure. When evaluating a CRM, don’t just listen to what a vendor tells you it can do for you. Instead, think about what your company needs and ask if it can deliver.

• Can the system be customized for your business needs?
• Is it flexible and scalable?
• Is it easy to use?
• How will it make your existing sales processes stronger?
• What is the key purpose of adopting a CRM?
• Will you use it to drive sales?
• How will the CRM handle leads?
• What will you do with the data collected within your CRM?

Don’t just jump into a purchase off a sales pitch. Be sure to carefully evaluate your organizational and sales needs, and don’t hesitate to get the CRM vendor to carefully answer and explain all of your questions or concerns.

2. Selecting a CRM that's too difficult to use, so your team members won't adopt it

Your sales team is busy. CRMs should make their jobs easier. Need a standard email reply sent on an inquiry? Need a reminder to engage with a customer by phone or email to move them further along through your sales processes? Your CRM should make that easy.

Unfortunately, many CRMs are just difficult to use and some aren’t mobile friendly. Your sales team is always on the go. If they have to go to the office, or stop somewhere and pull out a laptop or log onto a computer to update information, that task is likely going to get pushed further down a priority list and eventually out of sight is out of mind.

Look for CRM options that are mobile friendly and enable your sales team, not discourage them. Many organizations never experience the full benefits of their CRM because the information needed never gets collected.

3. Not establishing system ownership

Even an easy-to-use CRM needs someone (or a team) of people to own and manage it. Are there updates? How do those updates affect your processes? Were new features added? Who reviews those and decides if they align with your business and sales goals?

Organizations often leave these important decisions up to their IT teams. While your IT team should be involved to make sure there are no technical issues or vulnerabilities that may put your organization at risk, they should not have sole ownership or responsibility because they do not have the same insight into your sales and marketing processes as other team members do.

Whoever you select as your CRM owner (and be sure to have backups with the same training) should fully understand your company and sales goals and objectives and be able to align the CRM to your processes.

4. Not aligning your CRM to your sales processes and buyer’s journey

If you’re an established company, you have sales processes that work. Your CRM should fine-tune those processes and automate as many as possible. Need an appointment reminder sent to your calendar? That’s an easy task for a CRM to do. Need to schedule a follow-up email or phone call? Your CRM should be able to handle that. Your CRM should be aligned with your business and sales processes, as well as all of the stages of your buyer’s journey. If you haven’t created a buyer’s journey or buyer’s personas for your sales processes, stop and plan that journey before implementing your CRM. Get started right out of the gate headed in the right direction.

5. Not training your team on how to use your CRM and not explaining how it makes workflows easier

Let’s say you’ve done due diligence in selecting your CRM. It’s easy to use and you’ve selected team owners. You’ve set it up and aligned it with your sales goals and business processes. You’ve even mapped your buyer’s journey and set up personas and related information into your CRM. Now it’s time to sit back and watch the magic happen, right?

Not so fast. Even the best established CRMs need team buy-in. That buy-in begins with education and training. You can’t just say watch this video or read this handout and get to work. You’ll need to invest time and resources in ensuring the people who use your CRM know how it works, and that they understand how it helps them do their jobs better.

Be sure to explain the benefits and efficiencies of your CRM. Show your team members how it makes their jobs easier and can speed up your sales processes and eliminate repetitive tasks. Once you get buy-in from key team members, make them ambassadors for your CRM. Have them help others and share knowledge about how it’s changing the way they handle and process sales. Sales people are often driven by that bottom line so be sure they understand how it can help them make more sales more quickly and possibly with less effort.

6. Not enough data, too much data, or bad data

While CRM failure can begin by not purchasing the right system, it can also happen because of data issues. CRMs can do wonderful things with data, but you need careful planning and execution to ensure that data is being inputted, handled, and used correctly.

If you set up your CRM and enable or require too many fields, your users may feel like it’s more burdensome to use than it is beneficial, so they won’t drop in your requirements. Or maybe your CRM allows individual users to change or rename fields. Before you know it you have six versions of Company Name, Business Name, Organization Name and on and on, and no one knows which field to use or what they mean.

CRMs can also fail because they have too much data. Need to send an email but see three email addresses for the same person? How do you know which one to use? Have to make a phone call, but you’re not sure if you’re speaking to Deb, Debbie, or Debra? You may not want to pick up the phone.

Send an email and it bounces back? Make a call and get a wrong number? Bad data can be just as harmful to your organization as too much data.

Be sure you’re collecting the right amount of data you need and that the fields are clear and easy to understand. Make sure your users can simply and easily input information needed and encourage your system owners to routinely review CRM data to keep it fresh and current.

7. Not integrating your CRM into other business systems

Even the best planned CRMs can fail if they’re not properly integrated into your existing sales processes. Here’s an example: Let’s say you’ve collected all the information you need about a potential customer. They’re ready to make a purchase. All their information is perfectly stored within your CRM. Now you need to complete an invoice and get the product ready to ship or implement. If the core information you need is stored in your CRM and it can’t integrate with your billing or shipping systems, then you’re going to further frustrate team members who will have to manually get that data out of your CRM and into other systems. Not only is it incredibly inefficient, it leaves lots of opportunities for potential errors and communication missteps.

Your CRM should integrate with your existing business systems, like your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. These integrations can help you seamlessly move data along all of your business processes to happy customers, more sales, and a growing bottom line.

Benefits of CRMs

We just walked through some common missteps for CRM, but before we go, let’s look at some of the benefits.

• CRMs help you manage complex business relationships in easy-to-use dashboards where you can quickly visualize data about your customers’ needs.
• If you have a potential new customer, a CRM can help you quickly create quotes, track your engagements with that lead, plan for next steps, and follow you through closed deals.
• Rate card integrations for your CRM mean you’ll never have to guess on a quote again and will always have quick access to the right data to make sure you don’t make pricing mistakes.
• Sending emails with attachments or other marketing campaigns like newsletters? A good CRM helps you keep track of it all by carefully associating all related communications to your contacts.
• See your commissions in real time. A CRM lets sales teams see their commission rates based on percentages of sale, percentage or margins and other configurations.

Are you ready to simplify and streamline your sales processes with a CRM? Register for an aACE webinar and learn how you can start automating your sales processes and begin making more sales today!

If your business involves manufacturing and warehousing capabilities, you understand just how many individual parts must align at the right time in the right place to meet your peak operational efficiency goals and keep your customers happy.

One missed product order, one late shipment, or one missed invoice and your business can slow or come to a complete halt. Warehouse management automation through business management software (BMS) can decrease the likelihood of these errors and give you full insight into all your operations at any point in time.

Unfortunately, for many small and medium size businesses, many critical operational functions are still handled by disparate systems and sometimes even paper manifests facilitated by memory, paper calendar reminders, manual phone orders, and spreadsheets that are hundreds — or even thousands — of cells deep. Who can keep up?

These disparate and patchworked systems may work some of the time, but they’re time-consuming and often don’t provide complete or instant insight into your overall operations.

A BMS platform with shipping and receiving tools can remove the frustration and headaches of processes that have been hodge-podged together over time.

aACE’s shipping and receiving tools enable manufacturing and warehouse operators to improve efficiencies by managing all of their core operations in a single cross-platform solution. You can quickly get real-time insight into all of your inventory, fulfill orders, receive payments, and get alerts about all your processes from a single, easy-to-use solution.

Here are 5 ways aACE can help you streamline and automate tasks within your warehouse management system to improve operational efficiencies:

1. Inventory Management

If you’re still using manual processes for your manufacturing and warehousing operations, this might look familiar to you. A team member notices you’re running low on a product or supply. The employee logs in online or places a call for a reorder. You always get a specific number of that product and generally have a good idea of how long that will last you. The order is made and then sometime later a truck pulls up to your warehouse loaded with boxes of products or supplies.

When that shipment comes in, an employee receives the order. That employee may or may not know you’re expecting a delivery. Nonetheless, the driver and your employee exchange paperwork. The boxes are unloaded, and team members get busy counting and accounting for the shipment. Numbers and information are written down or put into a spreadsheet. Those boxes are then routed to another location in your facility where they’re stored until needed.

But what if the order was over-estimated and you have no room for all the extra goods that just came in? Or what if the employee who placed the order didn’t realize your team recently relocated that product to another section of your warehouse and you weren’t actually running low at all?

Now you have twice the product on the floor than you actually need and processes are slowed while everyone works together to try to figure out where to store the excess and how to manage the possible expenditure misstep.

This process is inefficient, tedious, and time-consuming. What if you could free up your employees resources here so their time could be put to use for more valuable tasks?

aACE’s built-in inventory management software (IMS) can speed up these processes with streamlined steps and automation, while supporting you with better insight and tracking.

For example, IMS gives you constant insight into your inventory. You can forecast inventory requirements based on your existing business processes and orders. It knows just how much inventory you need and when, and can help you save money with freight management tools.

2. Automated Shipments and Product Selection

Your warehouses are busy places. You have inventory constantly on the move. From supplies and products coming in to orders going out, if you’re using manual processes to track everything, it’s a juggling act — and it’s easy to drop the ball.

Automated shipping records will help your team always know which shipments are coming in and going out so no one is caught off guard.

You can even use aACE’s Pick App with barcode scanning to make sure that every product selected is the right one, every time.

3. eCommerce, Order Management, and Shipping

Product demand drives your inventory processes, so while you’re streamlining efficiencies within your warehouse, you can also streamline and automate many of your sales order processes.

An order management tool can help your team take orders from start to finish — while giving everyone complete insight into what’s happening without having to duplicate order entries in multiple places throughout your business.

aACE’s order management engine automates order entries, including full integrations with the industry’s most popular eCommerce tools. Your team members can easily take payments with point-of-sale payment processing and can even automate payments based on system events like when a deposit is needed, when goods are shipped, or other specifications tailored to your business processes.

The order management system can even automatically handle sales and use tax calculations, as well as credit management tools, and auto-generated purchase orders and invoices that are integrated with your regular accounting processes.

If a payment fails, aACE’s notification system will alert you via email and/or text messages before a product leaves your building — so you can easily follow-up and confirm payment before your shipment heads out the door.

And stop wasting time calling for couriers or waiting for an outgoing shipment pickup. With integrated NRG and ReadyShipper, you can streamline your packing and shipping processes, including support for major carriers like FedEx, USPS, UPS, and other LTL carriers.

4. Tracking and Statements

Remember that scenario we shared earlier with the tedious inventory management and manual supply tracking? Shipping and receiving software can eliminate some of that strain. With purchase order next-step tracking, you will always be aware of which supplies your team ordered and when those products will arrive. This means your team is always ready to receive new shipments.

Your purchasing and production team members can even receive instant notifications to let them know when incoming shipments have been received. That way they can speed up inspections, adjust for returns, and request re-shipments as needed. No more paper manifests and drowning in spreadsheets or repeating manual data entry across multiple work groups.

5. Calendar and Scheduling

The most efficient warehouse and manufacturing operations have comprehensive insight into all of the moving components of their operations.

Calendar and scheduling tools integrated into your business management software can help you get instant insight into everything happening across your operations. From leads, to purchase orders, to shipments and inventories, you can see calendar displays with all important related dates.

Best yet, those calendar events are linked to corresponding records, meaning you can drill down into more details with a single click within the calendar view, including insight into past events.

If your calendar is full, and we hope it is, you can filter your views by customer, job, teams, and resources — whatever you need to get a better picture of the important events that affect your operations. You can even color-code the events so you can easily see which events need immediate action and which are good to go.

The aACE+ DayBack calendar is also great for project management because you can switch to a Gantt-style view to see related events up to nine weeks out. And with drag-and-drop rescheduling, it’s easy to move things around to reschedule with related records.

Save Time, Money, and Resources with BSM

aACE clients say business management software saves them hundreds of hours of labor every month and the software is a critical to business success, including growth in annual revenue and more insight into business operational efficiencies.

Put down the paper and stop wasting time with tedious manual process. Register for an aACE webinar today to learn more about how its software can help you streamline your warehouse and manufacturing processes so you can focus more on tasks that improve customer service and add to your bottom line.

"I can say that using aACE actually helped us learn how to do business more professionally." - Jim Parker, President and Owner, Vacutherm Inc.

 

Have you made your New Year's resolutions yet? Whether you'd like to improve the way your sales team tracks leads, simplify your sales taxes, or document your custom workflows, our January webinars can help your business start 2020 off on the right foot. Last month we covered topics ranging from credit card purchasing to commissions and document management to beginning balances. Here's what we have in store for January:

January 6th – Sales Leads and the CRM App

Your sales team is moving fast to keep your customers and prospects engaged, and they need a solution that can keep up – even when they're on the go. See our CRM App in action and learn more about how sales leads move through aACE. Check out our sales leads and CRM App feature highlights for a sneak peek before the presentation.

January 8th – Tax Profiles and aACE+ AvaTax

Tax season isn’t anyone’s favorite time of year. Fortunately, aACE has you covered through our out-of-the-box tax management infrastructure as well as the aACE+ Avalara AvaTax integration. Learn how aACE takes the guesswork out of tax time.

January 22nd – aACE+ The BPR

Learn how The BPR can help you quickly, easily, and accurately document your company's unique workflows and customized features in this guest presentation from our friends at Optimum Output.

Register now to save your spot in these exciting presentations!

As companies evaluate ways to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs while better meeting customer needs and organizational goals, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools are increasingly valuable investments for businesses of all sizes.

By streamlining multiple disparate systems into one easy-to-use platform, ERPs connect business processes so data and information can be quickly and easily shared and analyzed to help organizations make better business decisions.

ERP adoption and implementation can be expensive. Depending on the number of applications you need, the number of users who access your system, and the amount of customization you require, on average businesses invest more than $1 million in a new ERP system.

So what would motivate a company to invest that much capital in a new business process management system?

The savings.

For example, one study finds that on average an ERP can reduce overall operational costs by 23% and administrative costs by 22%. That’s a significant saving over time. And while operational savings may be a driving factor to explore ERP adoption, quality ERP programs can do more than just save money.

Did you know that 95% of businesses say they have major operational improvements after implementing an ERP? The improvements include reducing process times, increasing collaboration and centralizing data.

Before we take a deeper dive into ERP cost-savings, let’s take a quick look at some questions you should ask when considering if an ERP is right for your company, if it’s within your budget, and if, once implemented, its improvements and efficiencies will add up to significant cost-, time-, and resource-savings:

• First, what do you anticipate your up-front costs to be?
• Have you completed a comprehensive analysis of your existing business processes?
• Have you aligned your vendor selection process with the requirements list you compiled after reviewing your business processes?
• Have you worked closely with your selected vendor to analyze budget-related obstacles? According to an ERP study by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), 65% of ERP implementations go over budget.
• Have you determined if an on-premise or cloud-hosted ERP best meets your needs?
• Have you determined the total number of applications and services you’ll need included in your ERP?
• Have you determined how many users will need to access your system?
• Have you selected an ERP that will work for you out-of-the-box or do you need additional customizations to meet your business needs? Remember that with most vendors, the more customizations you require, the higher your implementation costs may be.
• Have you determined which types of customizations you need and how complex they may be?

Once you’ve evaluated and determined your up-front costs, let’s look at ways an ERP can decrease operational expenses and promote longer-term organizational growth.

Here are 6 ways an ERP can save your business time and money:

1. ERPs cut operational costs and improve efficiencies

ERPs integrate core business processes. An ERP eliminates the need for disparate systems across departments and geolocations, and instead centralizes and integrates these functions into a single system. The goal is to streamline processes and improve information exchanges across an entire organization, no matter how large or small.

Essentially, this means more work can be done (with automation) using less time and resources as well as fewer people. Ultimately, that leads to fewer operational costs overall and sets your business on a path toward growth.

2. Improved communication and data exchange with better collaboration

Post-ERP adoption, most organizations experience an easier exchange of business information that is facilitated by a simpler flow of knowledge, information, and data throughout departments. This means business transactions throughout the organization are visible to key stakeholders in near real time.

As automation helps reduce errors and remove factors caused by people-based processes, (think…. "Oops! I left that document on my desk!"), ERPs help improve data information exchanges with more accuracy, which in turns means decision-makers can make better, more timely business decisions. Automation also leads to improved employee satisfaction by reducing frustration and increasing employee productivity.

As information exchange is made easier and organizational-wide communication improves, company-wide silos are often broken down and employees tend to be happier, further bolstering morale and productivity outcomes.

3. Centralized business functions and decreased process times

ERPs are designed to be easy-to-use systems that unify, standardize, and automate business processes—everything from customer service, to accounting, to inventory and supply chain management, to invoicing and payment, and everything in between.

ERPs help eliminate duplicate processes and save time. Gone are the days where, over time, a singular process is changed and modified by various employees to the point where it no longer resembles its initial intent and where one or two key employees hold the knowledge keys that, without them, could immediately thwart or halt operations.

A well-designed ERP will centralize your business functions and promote more timely and efficient daily operations.

Think about invoicing. With an ERP, standardized processes — including notifications and alerts to key team members — means the sooner you can get your invoices out, the sooner you can get paid. ERPs also help ensure that every employee follows the same processes, ensuring consistency across your operations for recurring tasks.

Also, it’s key here to point out that good ERPs will give you access to analytics and dashboards that will help you monitor processes and workflows and enable you to give thoughtful feedback to teams for improvements while keeping key stakeholders informed.

4. Inventory and Supply Chain Management

Manufacturing companies are leading the way for ERP adoption, but regardless of your business type, you can benefit from ERP efficiencies. One way is getting a more comprehensive look into your supply chain and better understanding the scope of your inventory.

Whether you need insight into ordering, refilling, or reviewing supply needs, an ERP can help align your product inventory with your customers’ current and future needs.

A quality ERP can help you decrease product shortages, proactively address supply chain gaps, and better budget for inventory volumes while decreasing unnecessary spending and purchases for items that may remain in long-term (thus unused) storage facilities.

ERPs help you better analyze spending and purchases over time so you can more accurately determine your inventory needs, including tracking, waste analytics, damage assessments, and evaluations of products that are no longer essential to your current business needs.

5. Improved customer relationship management (CRM)

Not only does an ERP move multiple business processes into a single platform, it can also align your customer relationship management (CRM) database into the same system, giving you comprehensive insight into your customers’ needs no matter where they may be in the buyers’ journey.

The best ERPs help organizations align all of their customer records into a single database. This unified records system gives companies the ability to track all of their customer interactions — everything from an email or phone call, to an order, invoicing, payment receipt, and customer feedback.

ERPs help you align your customer interactions and company communications into one dashboard allowing all stakeholders to immediately have insight to address customer needs. This creates a unique opportunity to improve your customer service and target communications specifically to your buyers based on predetermined categorizations established by your business goals and objectives. These targeted customer segments mean you can get the right message to the right customers at the right time and often removes manual processes, thereby facilitating more timely and accurate engagements with customer needs. These ERP improvements also give you the ability to quantify return-on-investment for customer satisfaction and interaction with your organization.

6. Less IT costs and reduced labor burdens

Earlier, we mentioned how ERPs help with centralizing business processes. A related time and cost-saving factor is specifically related to IT costs.

With disparate systems, IT teams must invest a lot of time and resources into maintenance costs, maintenance time, and direct or indirect labor costs involved with new software purchases, updating existing systems, follow-through on licensing agreements, and training. These older approaches to business systems often negate the option for scalability, especially when it comes to time and expenses.

ERPs remove the need to have different programs for different departmental functions, which are often more complicated and more costly the larger an organization is. ERPs help decrease additional spending on software and hardware systems and eliminate the need for routine workflow disruptions when those systems have to be updated, patched, or replaced.

ERPs: Worth the Investment

On average, it takes a small or medium sized business (SMB) about 11 months after go-live to experience the full benefits of ERP adoption. For larger businesses it’s a little faster, often about seven months.

When it comes to business process change management, that can seem like a quick turnaround, but for organizations that successfully adopt and implement an ERP, the overall operational efficiencies, improved customer service, opportunities for growth, and happier employees sometimes outweigh numbers on a spreadsheet.

Are you interested in increasing the speed and accuracy of your daily operations, with significant potential to save time, money, and resources? Register for a webinar today to learn how aACE can help you seamlessly integrate your sales, operations, and accounting systems into one, powerful, easy-to-use system.

"aACE helped us to bring all of our company functions together into one system. This has helped us with automating reporting and avoiding the need for extra cross-checking among systems." - Lance Caffrey, EVP Operations, American Christmas

 

As another year comes to a close, learn how you can set your business up for success in 2020 by joining our December webinars. Last month, we covered topics ranging from inventory to accounting and CRM to system administration. Here's what we have in store for December:

December 2nd – Credit Card Purchasing

You've seen Accounts Payable in action; now take a deeper look at how aACE makes it easy to use credit cards for purchasing.

December 4th – Document Management

aACE's document management system allows you to attach files directly to records in aACE, ensuring that you always have the information you need right at your fingertips. And for large files, aACE allows you to link records directly to a folder on your server. Check out our feature highlight and demo video for a sneak peek.

December 9th – Commissions

Learn how aACE's comprehensive commissions tools can help you incentivize your sales team and reward your affiliates for referring new business.

December 11th – aACE Job Shop App

Save time and reduce data entry errors on your production floor with the aACE Job Shop app. Before the webinar, check out our feature highlight and demo video to get an advance look at the app.

December 16th – Shipping & the aACE Pick App

Your customers depend on you to get them the right products at the right time. Learn how aACE streamlines the pick, pack, and ship process with our Pick App and shipping integrations, and take a sneak peek by checking out our feature highlight.

December 18th – Beginning Balances Part 1

Now that the end of the year is almost upon us, learn how aACE makes it easy to close out the year and start 2020 with accurate accounting.

December 23rd – Beginning Balances Part 2

Learn more about aACE's end-of-year accounting tools in this conclusion to our two-part webinar.

We look forward to seeing you in our December webinars! Register now to save your seat.

If you rely on a patchwork of systems to manage workflows and users across your organization, business process management can be a big source of frustration.

Do you have one program to manage your accounting needs? Another to handle customer relationship management (CRM)? Something else for inventory management? Do you have one or two people who hold the mental keys for all the knowledge about how everything works together?

This is reality for many organizations — an interconnected jumble of hodge-podge disparate systems, siloed knowledge, ever-changing technology, and employees that come, go, and shift around within your company.

When someone announces, “I’ve got a solution to handle all your needs!” your ears may perk up and you’re ready to dash off toward better days. It sounds great (and it really is) — one platform to automate vital processes and make your day-to-day business management run more efficiently.

When you’re presented with something feature-rich that could change the way you do business, it’s not hard to rush off after it. But when it comes to adopting an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, the challenge begins with actively analyzing your needs, then preparing for, choosing, and successfully implementing the right ERP for your needs.

So where do you begin?

Here are 8 challenges businesses face when choosing and implementing an ERP. Read on to learn how you can overcome some of the common missteps that can cost your company time and money, and derail your successful ERP adoption.

Challenge 1: Not a Good Starting Point

First, ERP selection and implementation hinges on strategy. That’s because without a well thought-out plan and approach, you may stumble over organizational problems or people-related issues, and miss aligning today’s processes with tomorrow’s needs.

When you’re thinking about adopting an ERP, it’s important to include an analysis of all of your existing business processes so you can better understand the scope of your ERP needs.

Don’t just think about existing processes as they function for your company today. ERP adoption is a great time to take a closer look at these processes, determine what works well, what can work better, and what your future needs may look like. If you have a process that doesn’t work well now and then you automate it with your ERP implementation, you’re not going to get the most out of what your ERP can offer. This evaluation can create opportunities to improve or change your existing workflows.

It’s also important at this early stage to look at all the critical software, systems, and applications that your organization needs to operate. What are your existing sticking points or problems? How can they be resolved with your ERP implementation? Remember, it’s important that all issues that may affect business-critical operations be assessed prior to choosing and implementing your new ERP.

Does your ERP solution seamlessly integrate with your existing business operations? Will it integrate with your sales program? Will it work with your accounting systems? Will it replace those other solutions altogether?

Did you know that 80% of respondents from a Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) survey said that ensuring the right fit of the ERP to business needs is often overlooked? That could mean that at the end of your implementation phase you may find yourself with an ERP that only meets some of your needs. Be sure to take the time up front to analyze all your operational needs and goals, map them out, and include them in a list of requirements before selecting your ERP vendor.

Challenge #2: Selecting the Right Vendor

After you’ve analyzed your business processes and needs and created a requirements list, it’s time to evaluate potential vendors against your ERP goals.

In that TEC survey we mentioned, 50% of respondents said that poor choice in selecting an implementation partner is a key reason why ERP implementations fail. That’s why it’s important to carefully select an ERP partner who will work closely with your team throughout the evaluation and implementation process — one that will proactively evaluate your goals and objectives and suggest plans and processes that will have positive impacts on your operations.

Here are a few questions you can ask:

• How many similar projects have you successfully implemented?
• What are some of the common issues you’ve encountered and how can we proactively address them before we get started?
• What types of industries do you serve?
• Could you tell me a little more about your scope of experience?
• What does your pricing criteria look like and what’s included?
• What are some of your ERP’s core features and how do they apply to my business needs?

Challenge #3: Business Silos and Communication Issues

When assigned the task of choosing and guiding an ERP implementation, it’s fairly common for teams to start at the top with executive-level buy-in. But what about mid-level managers and employees responsible for the day-to-day tasks directly related to your ERP processes?

While executive-level and key stakeholder buy-in is important (they can stronger influence company-wide understanding and adoption), don’t forget about how important it is to get involved with key employees who will use the system the most. Engage with them as early — and as frequently — as possible.

Once you’ve identified these key players, create a communication plan. Make sure all employees know about your ERP goals and take the time to engage with them so they understand how their individual roles are directly connected to company success.

If your company is too large for one person to handle all communication about your ERP plans and progress, create a small communications team that represents different departments throughout various parts of your organization (don’t forget about different geolocations, if applicable). Empower them to help tell your ERP story throughout your company.

Work with your core team to keep them up-to-date throughout the process and be sure they know it’s important (and their responsibility) to share that information — including progress, milestones, challenges, and setbacks — with their related teams. Always be sure these communication plans include the people who will be most affected by ERP implementation and adoption.

Don’t forget to create ways for your employees to give you feedback throughout the process. Be open to accepting suggestions, criticisms, and improvements, especially from those who will routinely use the system.

Challenge #4: Insufficient Budgeting

When budgeting for ERP implementation, there are a number of factors that could increase the scope of work and ultimately the final cost for your project. If your ERP system is out-of-the-box and meets all of your needs, you may need less wiggle room in your budget than for a system that requires a lot of customization to meet your needs. Remember that requirement list we mentioned in Challenge #1? The better you field that list and the better you evaluate your vendors against it (Challenge #2), the more successful you may be in curbing unexpected costs.

Also, don’t forget that most new systems require some level of upkeep and maintenance. Don’t let those extra costs slip away from you when you’re budgeting for a new system. Learn more about estimating service costs in our FAQs.

Challenge 5: Building the Right Team

We mentioned company silos and communication issues in Challenge #3. Selecting the right team members for your ERP assessment and implementation team can help address some of those challenges. While many people see ERP adoption as an IT priority, the reality is your new ERP system will impact many employees across many functions of your business.

Building the right team is essential to your success. Be sure your ERP team is made up of people from key departments throughout your organization. Include employees at all levels — executives, mid-level managers, project managers, and those responsible for day-to-day tasks that are a part of your ERP.

Challenge #6: Bad Data

If you’re migrating to new a business management solution and you lose valuable data or complete implementation with data that’s inaccessible, your ERP implementation process may be a big flop.

Bad data can be a big fail point for your ERP program. Be sure your vendor can handle data migration and can manage data integration without losing data quality or thwarting essential operations caused by data loss.

Challenge #7: Not Enough Time

ERP selection, implementation, adoption, and training can be time consuming. Often, key players need to be reassigned away from their normal daily tasks so they can focus full-time on ERP transitions. Work with your ERP vendor to create a project timeline that includes key roles and responsibilities. Compare this to your organizational needs and daily operational objectives. Align the two and then set an implementation timeline that realistically enables your company to function as you need while ERP implementation gets the attention and time it deserves. Remember, the more time spent on the front end of planning and implementation, the more likely it is that your team can tackle issues before they negatively impact operations post-adoption.

Challenge #8: Change Management Issues

Let’s say you’ve considered all your business goals and objectives. You’ve selected the best ERP for your needs. You’re working with a great vendor. Your budget is on point. You’ve given yourself enough time to work through each stage of the process. Your data migrated successfully and all systems are operational. But what happens when the people affected by the new system don’t embrace the change? What if they prefer to do things the way they’ve always been done? What if naysayers negatively impact employee perception of all the work your team accomplished?

The reality is, not everyone likes change and even fewer like change that’s forced upon them without their input. About 45% of people from the TEC survey said poor change management is a factor in ERP implementation, and unfortunately, change management is an area often overlooked in business.

When planning for your ERP, be sure to create plans that address change management — not just for the processes and technologies, but people, too. ERP is more than a behind-the-scenes solution. It can affect an entire operation.

One way to help manage this change is to ensure you’ve addressed the communications and team member challenges mentioned earlier, but also by providing adequate and efficient training on the new ERP system. Create a training schedule that gives employees enough time to get comfortable with the new system and addresses questions and concerns. Encourage feedback and reward employees whose suggestions make your operations better.

Efficiencies With ERP

Once you’ve overcome these challenges, you’ll be well on your way to improving business efficiencies with your new ERP solution. Your operation will run more smoothly, your team will be able to automate many tasks that may have previously been done manually, and you’ll have instant access to data and insight that can help your company make better operational decisions. Ready to learn more? Check out our feature highlights to see how aACE can help you optimize your workflows.

"I started searching for an ERP solution for our company using the brute force approach — contact as many software vendors as possible and compare. I went through about a dozen vendors, not finding the perfect fit, until I came across aACE. The aACE Software team initially struck me as unique, refreshingly knowledgeable and very in-tune with the modern demands of an ERP software package — solving problems with their software that no one else seemed to give a second thought, and making mainstream technology and media work the way it should for a company. The efficiencies built into the software are strong on all fronts — especially accounting and order fulfillment tracking. I definitely recommend the superior product and the team behind it that makes it so." ~ Derek Navratil, IT Administrator, Essential Water Solutions, Inc.