Maintaining long-term growth isn’t simply about keeping things the same way as they were before you got to this point. Taking your business to the next level requires you to constantly evaluate the limitations of your organization so that you can recognize the right time to implement changes.
Usually accounting and business management systems are the first ones to become outdated.
Here are signs that signal you have outgrown the current system:
- Simply adding headcount no longer effectively resolves the issues you’re experiencing with timely invoicing, nor does it substantially reduce the number of manual data entry errors
- You find yourself in need of increasingly frequent and complex reports while still experiencing data gaps
- Sales and customer satisfaction suffer due to incomplete customer engagement information
- Business information is not readily available and is hard to be accessed remotely
- In order to complete their daily tasks your employees have to go back and forth between multiple applications that don’t talk to each other
Outdated technology is holding back growth
Functions such as process integration, optimizing ordering and processing, improving data integrity and matching inventory levels to forecasted demand are all crucial to have in order to meet the requirements necessary to support a growing business. Limitations placed, upon any small and mid-sized business, due to outdated technology quickly become apparent to management as they adversely affect every process, client engagement and outcome throughout the company.
What causes problems is that the entry-level accounting systems – or simply systems that have become outdated – are not equipped to help you tackle these essential activities, resulting in slowing the growth of your organization.
The good news is that now cloud solutions are being developed with small and medium companies in mind, allowing any organization to manage their core financial operations quickly, securely and reliably. Additionally, the cloud deployment model ends the need for large infrastructure investments, drastically lowering IT overhead. Having a cloud system also allows you to have the flexibility to add people and functionalities at your own pace, ensuring that as your business grows, the systems you use will maintain the ability to fully support it.
Connecting people and processes through the cloud
While entry-level accounting software may be able to help you manage the basics while the company is in its early stages, it is less likely that the same system will have the built-in flexibility and adaptability to grow and evolve in a way that would ensure no disruption to internal processes or harm customer relations.
Instead of compensating for system shortcomings by implementing disparate patching solutions, a unified cloud platform seamlessly consolidates everything that a given system user needs to be aware of in one place, enabling higher efficiency and data consistency.
Cloud-based technology also enables you to have improved visibility into all segments of your organization. Combining this with complete and accurate data, as well as advanced analytics and reporting, allows you to make more informed decisions to further optimize internal processes and effectively manage all customer engagements.
By listening to the requirements of our clients during implementations of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Merit Solutions has developed a way for midsized companies to get up and running with a tier 1 solution such as D365 for a fraction of the cost of conventional deployments. Companies looking to start small and grow at their own pace – not by patching over system issues with disparate solutions, but rather by expanding functionalities of a single solution – can work with us to jumpstart their process of digitalization.