For small to medium businesses Excel files can be used to manage many aspects of your business processes very efficiently. You can store service requests, stock quantities and any Bill of materials (BOM’s) that your business uses. Using Excel can be a very cheap option for keeping your business ticking over and keeping records of multiple parts that are used for your business processes.
While being good for the smaller companies, there is a point where an Excel file becomes overrun particularly when there are hundreds or even thousands of products to keep track of.
With the constant advancements in software, products like Excel and paper job sheets are becoming a thing of the past so you will need to look at a more integrated solution to improve efficiency and control costs within your business.
If you are a Sage 50 user you may consider upgrading to Sage 200 with the advanced functionality it has to offer; however, it is a large jump in cost from Sage 50 to Sage 200 which can make this jump rather daunting. This is where a company specialising in ERP software that seamlessly integrates with sage 50 could help solve the problems that are being exhibited by Sage 50 at a more affordable price.
So what is ERP software?
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning software is a system that allows you to manage all the core processes in your business, like staff scheduling, business planning, job management, and stock control.
How would an ERP solution fit your business?
Whether it be Inventory management, job scheduling, order management, purchase or sales order management, these are all features an ERP system would manage. One of the main advantages is it allows each business sector to take the information from a shared database. This means the purchasing department can see how many orders the sales team are working on. This means they can see if more stock needs to be purchased in advance based on how many order are coming in.
Integration with your accounting software ensures that rekeying of data is a thing of the past, you only need to create sales orders, invoices, purchase orders and products once, thus increased efficiency and great time saving.
To conclude, Microsoft Excel files are perfect for managing your core processes at a smaller stage. However ERP software is a huge solution that has endless capabilities to aid your business processes. This is perfect if you are a growing company and it is something worth looking into if you haven’t already. To see what SAM Software solutions has to offer in regards to ERP please visit our website at www.samsoftware.com or give us a call at 0115 8475210.
