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Need an ERP software change?

For months you’ve heard complaints from your team that your ERP software doesn’t cut it anymore. It takes too long for them to complete simple tasks, they can’t access up-to-date information, and there is little collaboration between sales and finance.

It’s pretty clear that your existing software is slowing their work down further. Your CEO isn’t too pleased either. It’s time to take control of the situation before the business starts to suffer.

By this point, you’ve probably been looking for a new solution for a while, so you should have an idea of what you want and need.

Before you do anything else – if you haven’t already – you need to get approval from your CEO or company’s Board. From there, you’ll need to make sure you select the right solution for your business and its needs.

We’ve outlined 7 questions that you need to ask yourself to prepare for choosing your ERP system.

1. What’s the budget?

This is the first and most important question you need to get an answer to.

Without knowing your budget, your search for a new ERP system will be near impossible.

Narrow down your search criteria by establishing the overall budget for the project, and make sure any quotes you get from potential partners cover all aspects of the cost – you don’t want to find there are nasty surprises in the form of hidden charges at the end.

2. What business issues do you want to resolve?

To avoid making the wrong choice, you need to have a clear understanding of what issues and challenges your team – or business as a whole – is facing and how changing your ERP software will fix those problems.

If you make the decision to change solutions, it needs to tick the boxes.

3. What are your business’ requirements?

Speak to the people who use the existing system (or systems), find out what the issues are with it and what they need to fix those problems. What does the business need to be able to be more productive, efficient, and profitable?

4. What functionality do you need?

What tools do they need to do their jobs every day? Which aspects of the existing system fail? Which aspects are they making do with but need improvement? What functionality do they not have at all but need to do their jobs?

Look at your processes and how they need to be improved across each department. How can these processes be automated for a more streamlined business experience? How can the solutions you’re considering accommodate these needs?

5. How do you want to report?

Slow reporting processes or systems which don’t accommodate automatic report creation is a major reason for a CFO to look into changing ERP systems.

So deciding how you want to report and ensuring you have the correct functionality to allow you to do that should be a top priority.

6. How many users do you need?

The number of users that need to access the system is incredibly important.

If your employees have share a small number of user accounts down the line because you can’t afford to pay for more, this will cause some real issues.

It’s a good idea to look into whether each solution will allow you to be flexible with your user accounts – if someone leaves the business, or a department grows, you’ll want to be able to adjust your system to keep up with the demand – whether that increases or decreases.

7. What will the business need in the future?

A lot of CFOs make the mistake of implementing an ERP system that suits what the business needs now, and in the coming months.

This is a big investment, so you want your chosen solution to be future-proof.

The last thing you want is to have to make another investment again in a few years’ time, so this decision needs to be the right one.

If your business has a 5-to-10-year plan (which it should), make sure you take this into consideration.

Are you ready?

It is so important to ensure you have the answers to all 7 of these questions before you make a decision and start looking for implementation partners.

However, there will be other questions that come up as you go through this process – a lot of these will be determined by your business’ sector.

To make sure you leave no stone unturned, make a note of any and all questions that arise throughout the research and scoping processes and be sure to answer them all before you sign any contracts.

Once all questions are answered, you are ready to get quotes and start arranging meetings with potential ERP implementation partners.

What next?

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7 Questions to answer for a successful ERP software change