A report on Small & Medium Size Enterprise growth (SME’s) says it accounts for about 94 per cent of all companies operating in UAE. The rise in SMEs in the UAE is being driven by the introduction of new policies designed to boost private sector growth, such as allowing 100 per cent foreign ownership of limited liability companies (LLCs) in certain sectors. Also, SMEs entering the UAE market has grown by 30 per cent in the past decade.
The growth of SME is particularly strong in Technology, Healthcare and Education sectors considering that development of non-oil sectors is a key objective of the UAE’s strategic development vision to diversify the economy away from oil dependency.
It has been a general trend that ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is best suited for large scale industries due to high cost of ownership, complexity of implementation and subsequent maintenance cost. But in the last decade there has been noticeable rise in number of SMEs willing to take on this technology and make it integral part of their business.
Factors that decide why a SME Organization needs an ERP system for their Business
- Increased Revenue Opportunities
As SME Organization grow their business operations they need to pass through this transitional phase where it should able to alter core business capabilities that will generate increased revenue opportunities. An ERP system provides that flexibility needed to make this shift.
For example, It is very much similar to, as a teenager we keep hung to our favourite tee, and in the process when we grow up, you can stretch it out and wear until you lose all your circulation in your torso. In the same way business experience similar growing pains with their operations increasing with more data to be captured. Delaying the change to adopt an ERP system is just inevitable.
Data is thus the blood of your business, and you have to keep it flowing.
If you are processing data in entry level software application built to hold only so much volume, you need a more robust system to do all that heavy lifting.
How a Syros Enterprise ERP helps?
ERP system is designed to store large amount of data across the spectrum of business operations. These operations include Finance, Manufacturing, Procurement, Sales, CRM, HR & Payroll etc. The flexibility of ERP system provide SMEs owners with room for continued growth and, just as important some peace of mind.
- Existing Process is Inefficient
If you are losing track of all your spreadsheets maintained, constantly checking data from different software, or struggling to incorporate a new business process which might require a new software altogether or need to incorporate a separate spreadsheet and use it in alignment with other data. Ultimately, if your various applications struggle to communicate with each other, don’t worry you are not alone. These are common challenges faced by any growing SME Organization and some of the main reasons to upgrade to ERP system.
For example, a manufacturer relies on demand forecast to manage production and maintain adequate level of inventory. But, to do so it requires accurate data from sourcing, warehouse existing levels of inventory, sales, internal distribution and other manufacturing planning functions.
Lack of communicate between the codependent processes is almost certain to result in unwanted surplus or shortages resulting into higher inventory carrying cost.
How a Syros Enterprise ERP helps?
ERP has the ability to integrate the different functions seamlessly, combining the different operations in a single central platform. It also eliminates all the duplicate processes you’re doing across different applications in your organization. Reduces the risk of data entry as information has to be entered once into a centralized system.
- Spending too much on Software Integration
If your organization relies on multiple software integrations to streamline data and to use it cross departmentally. But, integrating multiple application and to maintain it is not cheap at all. There might be License cost, Staffing, Training, Operations and Labour required to get them work well together. Even if they work together the price of owing and maintaining the various application requires lot of effort in terms of cost and time.
Your business requires an ERP system which comes with the embedded functionalities which otherwise have to be managed via multiple applications.
For example, a Real Estate organization maintains multiple applications for managing its Accounting, Inventory, Legal Cases & Sales operations which results into higher cost of owing and additional effort is required to keep the various applications on a single platform.
How a Syros Enterprise ERP helps?
A centralized ERP platform with embedded functionalities of Accounting, Inventory, Legal Management, Sales and other ERP functions reduces training costs, user errors and the expense of maintaining multiple applications.
- Struggling to meet Customer Demands
Your customers are vital to your organization, and for a growing organization failure to deliver to customers their product on time, statement of accounts, or comprehensive reports retrieving information from various departments, any other specific financial information is essential.
For example, you are a manufacturer who is increasing production and plant capacity but you are still using manual methods to record production activities and using separate applications to record accounting and manufacturing data. Increasing sales request beyond plant capacity can’t be judged with such manual data or it might require time to gather data to estimate whether the plant has the required capacity to deliver the product required to customer within the specified time asked. It gets messy when the data is required instantly to take decisions.
How a Syros Enterprise ERP helps?
ERP system can help you scale appropriately and account for any increased demand with analytics data available to take decisions.
- ERP Systems collects data from accounting, CRM, order management and shipping among other departments.
- It consolidates the data into single, easy to navigate dashboards & reports providing greater efficiency, accuracy and insight into your internal processes.
The above tools are indispensable to have in your organization to ensure your customers remain happy and loyal advocates of your business.
How to decide whether your company requires ERP?
In order to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) for your company these days is much hassle free as compared to earlier due to the emergence of Cloud based ERP Software. The move is also being accelerated by lower upfront costs, easy to maintain & upgrade, and a specialized industry specific platform.
We have covered most common factors driving users towards ERP but the decision to implement an ERP / upgrade the software to a robust ERP system go far beyond the points covered in this article. You need to the below survey to determine the business requirement criteria whether it is the right time to have an ERP system in place.
- Meet your employees and stake holders to understand the challenges they are facing currently in using multiple applications;
- Perform audit on your current process to see how an ERP could specifically improve your workflow.
- Understand the investment which the company is making in using multiple application and how the cost of ownership can be lowered by using the ERP system for longer duration.
- What all benefits will the company get in terms better customer service, data redundancy to reduce, can take decisions on readily available data etc.
Once you have done your analysis, present your workings to management to leverage and implement the solution.
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