Making the transition from Sage Small Business Software (or any basic accounting system) to a more contemporary, feature-rich solution can be frightening. Delaying the project, though, may also result in missed opportunities. If you put a new system in place too soon, you’ll be stuck paying for a service that you hardly ever use. If you procrastinate too long, you risk losing out on sales while attempting to manually manage processes and meet demand. Therefore, once you have a realistic idea of your growth projections, it is always a good idea to be aware of your options and begin researching robust ERP software. By doing this, you will have completed the majority of your research before the time comes. You won’t be able to switch to ERP overnight, though, as many vendors schedule implementations months in advance. If your company can relate to any of the seven factors listed below, you know you’ve outgrown Sage Small Business and it’s time to start looking into ERP right away.
Top 7 Business Reasons Why Sage Small Business Software Is Outdated
Throughout the organisation, manual processes waste time.
The file size, user, and/or data limits have been reached.
You want to begin collaborating with suppliers and clients all over the world.
Custom reports cannot be produced.
You don’t have all the features a developing company needs.
You find the Help Desk services to be frustrating.
For product tracking and regulatory compliance, you need stringent controls.
1. Across the entire organisation, manual processes consume time.
One of the most obvious causes for a corporation to start looking for new software is because manual procedures and the attendant human errors are wasting valuable resources. If your team is spending a lot of time conducting manual tasks like data input, computations, or updates, think about how a good system could better utilise those resources.
Employees will be forced to use manual workarounds in order to calculate commissions, handle credit card transactions, track inventory, enter sales orders from various sales channels, record online payments, keep track of expiration dates, and other daily tasks if there is no automated system in place. Absence of an automated system can also result in keying errors and sluggish, laborious order processing and billing, irritating clients, staff, and partners in the supply chain.
2. Your system has use, data, and file size restrictions.
Since they are intended to be the first system implemented at an organisation, introductory software solutions, like Sage Small Business, frequently contain restrictions on the number of users, file size, and transaction volumes. It’s time to start considering ERP software if you’re beginning to go close to any of these boundaries. In addition to not having any substantial limitations on the aforementioned, the ideal ERP system will also be able to add more resources as your business expands.
3. You want to begin collaborating with suppliers and clients all across the world.
You will need additional capabilities, such as the capacity to manage numerous currencies, exchange rates, and track landing expenses, if you wish to grow your firm to deal with clients and suppliers all over the world.
It takes a lot of time and is prone to mistakes to manually calculate exchange rates, which can be detrimental to your business and partnerships. Strong ERP software, on the other hand, enables users to automatically specify various prices for each item depending on the customer’s and/or vendor’s currency and takes necessary measures to account for variations in exchange rates between transaction and settlement dates. To make sure you always have the most recent information in the system, you can also automatically update exchange rate values daily.
In order to make sure that the gross margin your company obtains on products matches your estimates, you must be able to take landing expenses into account when calculating inventory values and cost of goods sold. Appropriate landed costs will also have a direct impact on items like commission payments and price choices.
4. You cannot make personalised reports.
It is impossible to evaluate the achievement and expansion of your business if you are unable to consistently compile and develop insightful management and financial reports. Yes, you can manually enter data again into Excel each month, but this takes a lot of effort and has a significant margin of error. Instead, your software system should be able to automatically produce reports for you that can be printed, emailed, and shared in order to assess the health of your business and aid in process improvement and cost reduction.
5. You don’t have key features that a developing company needs.
Perhaps you didn’t require eCommerce when you first launched your company. Or perhaps there weren’t enough orders to justify barcode scanning. Nevertheless, when your company expands, these kinds of feature requirements will start to affect it if you can’t handle them. The epidemic has shown us the value of eCommerce for companies of all sizes, if there is anything. If your present system doesn’t support eCommerce and can’t connect to well-known platforms like Shopify, it will be necessary to manually handle orders and inventories. Inventory management and picking errors are reduced in the warehouse thanks to barcode scanning. It’s time to start looking elsewhere if you’re still doing things manually that another system can do.
6. You find the Help Desk services to be frustrating.
There are several advantages to using personalised Help Desk services, where the software vendor gets to know you and your company on a first-name basis. Someone who is familiar with your needs and those of the sector might recommend ways to increase productivity and streamline procedures. As an extra advantage, having a localised Help Desk team and being able to speak with the same contact person each time will enable your business to experience significant time savings and lower levels of frustration when things go wrong.
7. You need strong controls for product tracking and regulatory compliance.
It is not only advantageous but also required that your business use a software system with lot tracking capabilities if it deals with perishable or potentially dangerous goods. With the help of this kind of software, your business can handle product recalls quickly and effectively, mitigating any danger to consumer health and brand reputation. Lot tracking enables you to identify which products have been compromised, where they are, and how to get them back, as opposed to having to recall all shipping products. Maintaining accurate lot monitoring also fosters confidence with your suppliers and clients. Pharmaceutical distribution, for example, is subject to considerably stricter rules, necessitating an industry-specific solution with the appropriate controls.