It’s a story that plagues many of today’s manufacturers and distributors. Your company just invested in an expensive ERP system. You brainstormed with your software development company. You held round after round of meetings. After months of back and forth, you are finally ready to implement a powerful ERP system tailored specifically to your business that features integrations for your biggest clients. You’ve tested it, installed it and finally pulled the trigger to launch. And it works! Your ERP system is streamlining your operations and supporting your sales efforts. It’s a dream come true…
…Until you seal a deal with a new major retailer. Or you open a new line of ecommerce business. Now your expensive software system can’t provide seamless ERP integration with your new sales channel. You’re back to workarounds. You contact your software development partner and discover that to make your ERP communicate with your new customer, you will need to repeat the development process all over again. It will take weeks. On top of that, you’ll have to invest even more money. All of this just to keep up with your expanding sales network.
On the other hand, you can avoid this laborious process by investing in off-the-shelf ERP integration software. Rather than a hulking, time-consuming custom-developed software solution built by the ERP companies and retrofitted to meet your integrated document needs, all-in-one ERP integration software is agile, frequently updated software designed by experts to respond to the way modern companies do business.
But how do you know if you should extricate yourself from “business as usual” and invest in stand-alone ERP integration software? Here are 5 signs to look out for.
- You’re doing double data entry. If there is any data in your system that you must re-enter during another part of your transaction, you can benefit from ERP integration software.
- You’re performing manual data entry for more than a few orders. If you are finding that your teams must enter data manually on more than the occasional document for an outlier client or two, your business can benefit from automation.
- You’re being held back from expanding into new sales channels. If your business plans to open new revenue streams by selling your products in different marketplaces, automated ERP integration software will help you keep up with expansion. Plug-and-play integration software includes integrated connections for the world’s most common retailers and ecommerce providers, and supplies new connections for emerging channels.
- You can’t fully commit to new contracts. If you’re going into meetings with buyers from large retail chains, you should be able to state with confidence that your business has the appropriate ERP integration software in place, so you can begin fulfilling orders immediately. If you can’t agree to start doing business with your new partner right away, the speed-to-deployment that comes with an automated system can likely help you.
- You receive consistent chargebacks from your partners due to data errors. If you deal with big companies who issue a chargeback because of a minor error–like a wrong quantity or an invoice with an incorrect amount–you can benefit from automation. All-in-one ERP integration software maintains consistency across data sets and alerts you when there is a problem so you can take action immediately.
Automated integration software doesn’t mean that you have to scrap your current investment or adjust to a totally new workflow. You can keep the ERP system you have already implemented and simply enhance it with flexible software that takes over integration. The software will stay in line with your existing rules and business logic.
All-in-one ERP integration software is also pre-configured to provide integrated connections to many different retailers, services and marketplaces. The software not only features updated connections to the most common sales channels, but the built-in integrations keep expanding to keep up with the market.
If you are tired of the time and resources it takes to stay in a state of perpetual software development in order to keep up with your sales partners – or if any of the above signs are apparent in your workflow – automated ERP integration software is likely the ideal solution for you.
To learn more about how Alluvia’s ERP integration platform can help your business, contact us today.