ERP Software Secrets For Small And Mid-Sized Companies

With rising material costs and the global economic crisis, reducing expenses and costs all across the board is a key initiative for companies all across the world, but especially for small and medium sized companies. The economic environment is driving companies to look for tools particularly technologies such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications and solutions to meet these goals. However, when looking for the right ERP solution to meet their cost cutting objectives, organizations are clear that they cannot sacrifice customer service or satisfaction for short term cost cutting benefits. With the pressure of the company's poor performing P&L and the cloudy economic climate it's easy to see how company manager would be tempted to risk long term benefits such as market share and customer loyalty to achieve short term profitability rewards.

Survey reports from medium size companies indicated that ERP applications and software solutions are essential tools for achieving optimal performance and results in cutting company costs while increasing customer service and satisfaction by increasing order and delivery accuracy, and product availability.

The summary statistics for organizations with enterprise resource planning solutions already deployed and in use to streamline operations and decrease costs are as follows:

Best of Class Organizations in 2009 Reveal That::

1. The companies using ERP solutions reduced costs by 18 percent compared to the industry average of10 percent
2. The performance results for deliveries increase by 20 percent for companies using ERP systems versus the industry average of 10 percent.
3. Back office cost including admin, accounting and finance dropped by 21 percent for ERP companies compared to 7 percent for the industry average.
4. The Best of Class of companies using enterprise systems and tools (the top 10 percent) were all using the most updated version of their ERP software.
In conclusion, the top three cost reduction areas of opportunity were:
1. Making business processes visible to managers to they could make improvements on a real time basis.
2. Optimizing sales, customer relationship and back office processes
3. Optimizing labor, machine and plant assets, inventory assets, fleet and transportation and scheduling
In order to make the best of class category in their industry, organizations need to have an effective ERP solution on board and more importantly in use. Manager must continue to train, reward, and incentivize employees to fully take advantage of what their enterprise system has to offer and make the tools available company wide, not just for a select few manager and employees.

Learn more about ERP Software and ERP Implementation at Erp.com