Are You Using ERP to Improve Your Business?

Imagine trying to run your busy, modern life without your smartphone. You wouldn’t be able to read your boss’s morning briefing during your commute to work. Nor listen to your favourite podcasts, arrange meetings with colleagues, check your bank balance, pay your bills, consult bus and train timetables, exchange communications and documents with co-workers, customers and suppliers, or look ahead at the day’s work schedule.

To do any of these things without your smartphone — and countless others besides — you’d need to be sat at a computer with an internet connection. In short, you’d be at a serious disadvantage compared to the rest of the world. For of course, we live in a world of smartphones — and just because you haven’t got one, doesn’t mean that nobody else has. And so, while everybody around you is up to speed and constantly connected to everyone and everything they need to get things done no matter where they are, you’re left behind in the dark.

Now imagine trying to run a successful, modern business without a dependable, efficient, and constantly connected solution that keeps track of all company information, activities, and moving parts. Without a system that facilitates instant communication between employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Without a programme that connects all of your organisation’s departments — finance, accounting, procurement, inventory, distribution, HR, project management, sales, marketing — allowing them to work together from the same, dependable information.

Imagine, in the modern world, where such solutions exist, and a growing number of your competitors are reaping the full benefits of them, your organisation is left flailing behind in the dark.

This, indeed, is precisely why so many of today’s successful businesses use Enterprise Resource Planning software solutions like metasfresh ERP — and why, if you’re involved in running and growing a modern business, you should be using one, too.

The global ERP software market is expected to reach $70.3 billion by 2025, according to recent figures from KBV Research, rising at a market growth of 10.5% CAGR during the forecast period. Clearly, there is a growing demand for ERP — but what is an ERP system exactly, what does it do, and why is it proving so beneficial to so many businesses?

Well, as KBV Research puts it:

Got that?

Essentially, ERP software is composed of powerful and strategic business process management tools that organizations use to manage their various and wide-spread business functions from within a centralized, integrated system. This includes everything from finance and accounting to supply chain management, human resources, and business intelligence.

metasfresh ERP is one such system — an agile, flexible, and scalable over-arching programme that organizations use to keep constant track of everything that’s going on within the company and connect all departments and moving parts together. Combining analytics, automation, and big data, metasfresh ERP integrates all facets of an enterprise into one, comprehensive information system that all members of the organisation can access, giving real-time visibility into the inner workings of business operations.

In practice, this means that all employees across all departments can rely on the same, up-to-date information to work from — and not worry about anything getting lost in some poorly maintained, inscrutable spreadsheet. What’s more, our open source ERP solution not only gives organisations the helicopter view of what’s happening, it also allows them to automate and streamline back office tasks — from generating employee schedules to issuing invoices and performing data entry — helping employees become more productive in their roles and unburdening them from repetitive, manual duties.

For example, let’s say a sales representative receives an order from a customer. metasfresh ERP will automatically send that information to the distribution centre that is best placed to complete the order in a timely manner. It does so by scanning inventory levels, shipment times, and other factors to decide which distribution centre would be most productive — and cost-effective — in completing that order. Imagine all the calls, and all the digging through files to try and find this information manually — all the while your customer is waiting to know how long it will take to fulfil their order. With a powerful ERP system like metasfresh, all the information any member of the workforce needs is right at their fingertips.

And this is just one example. metasfresh ERP can be easily configured to automatically reorder materials as soon as stock levels reach a certain threshold, ensuring you never experience either out-of-stock or overstocked incidences. Repetitive HR tasks like employee scheduling, tracking absences, and managing leave can all also be automated to save time.

When it comes to project management, our ERP solution provides users with an accurate, real-time overview of entire product life cycles — meaning your organisation can oversee not only what’s happening in the supply chain, but day-to-day production as well. And, of course, our system will manage all of your business accounting requirements — including budgeting, recording transactions, and measuring cash flow — giving you the complete, up-to-the-minute picture of your company’s financial health and allowing your finance team to balance the books in seconds.

In order to compete successfully in the modern business environment, organisations need technology solutions to connect departments, increase productivity, improve customer service, identify flawed processes, and leverage operational data to support decision-making.

ERP software does it all and more besides — which is why today’s top solutions like metasfresh are playing a vital role in helping companies future-proof their operations, achieve their business goals, and realise growth and success.

If your workforce is spending too much time on processes that can be automated, if you don’t have easy access to the data you need to make informed business decisions, if you don’t know what your inventory levels look like on a daily basis, if your teams can’t easily share information and collaborate together, or if you’re struggling to integrate numerous software tools and processes into one all-seeing and -doing comprehensive system — it’s time you spoke to us here at metasfresh.

Since 2006, we have been developing our metasfresh ERP software non-stop with open source components and under the open source licenses GPLv2 and GPLv3. Our mission is to enable each and every company to access a powerful ERP system with the aim of fuelling corporate growth. Get in touch today for more information and insights.