Pre-ERP Investment Criteria

Investing in ERP may seem like a pure expense/cost but there is so much more to it. Before investing in ERP, you should take stock of your business in clear and simple terms. Perform an internal assessment, speak to your heads of department, specifically finance, purchasing, sales and operations. Understand their pain points and the difficulties they encounter on a daily basis. View the gaps in their reporting, are the reports analytical enough? can you glean enough information to make strategic decisions?

Approach the details as an auditor would, pay attention to traceability, escalation paths, approvals, data transparency. Now add a business perspective on top of that, look for revenue leakage, redundancies, elimination of manual effort and paperwork, automation of operations. Finally, apply a long view/strategic thought process on top of that in terms of expansions, department structures, resourcing, work schedules, plans to go public listed, and employee retention/workplace morale.

The way an investment in ERP works is, you implement the system and your business undergoes a transformation. Your workforce starts adopting best practices and you start to gain more information that helps you make better decisions. Eventually, you are eliminating costs, streamlining your operations, and spending the time savings on bringing in new business and expanding the support system to sustain your growth