business growth

Business Growth with the Right ERP Solution

In the business world, rapid growth is a strategy that needs to be well thought out and fast. For some small to medium-sized businesses the dream of eventually becoming an industry giant is more than just a dream. The ultimate goal is to have significant pricing power, strong brand awareness, and a nearly unlimited supply of new orders. However, that growth comes at a cost – literally. All the extra finance and labor resources are a need to manage that kind of growth. That’s why many fast-growing SMBs are now embracing business management software to help them manage that boost.

Prepare the Foundation for Future Growth

Is your business unprepared for a rapid sales maturation? When you have a bestselling product, you might find it hard to keep that product in stock. If every time you receive a new shipment it sells out quickly the result can be devastating. Or, you might not be ready for all the extra resources you need to deal with calls, inquiries, and requests. Working overtime  might be necessary, but can your SMB afford to live in a perpetual state of overtime? Would you want your employees to work nights, weekends, and holidays to keep up with customer orders? The consequences of such a scenario would hit your payroll pretty hard. Implementing a business management software provides better processes that secure a strong foundation for the future of your bussiness.

Business management software can have an impact in several different ways. First, the process of automating much of your inventory or logistics will free up essential resources, like employee hours. Secondly, you gain the ability to change production planning and delivery schedules regularly. The results will make your company much more proactive rather than just reactive to changing market conditions.

Scalability

The very best business management software will help scale your business. What this means, in practical terms, is that you won’t “outgrow” your business software as soon as you install it. As the complexities of your business increase, features in your business software that help you manage this evolution are needed. Many software packages are  “one-size-fits-all” and don’t allow you to scale up as your business become more complex.

You need a solution that you can use three months from now and three years from now. Making sure that you aren’t installing, uninstalling, and re-installing new software every time you hit a milestone is integral to your growth strategy.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Right now, would your SMB be able to adjust if a supplier suddenly could not meet its obligations? Could you manage the situation if consumer demand for a product suddenly takes off overnight? What if external market factors (such as broader changes, local or national economic changes) suddenly turn for (or against) you?

If you are still managing your business with paperwork, spreadsheets, and calculators, you would have a tough time adjusting to market-changing factors. The good news is a reliable business management software helps you to respond and adapt to these changes. A robust solution will have business intelligence reporting capabilities that can help you spot new trends in advance. For example, when a supplier gradually cuts back on the volume of product, you can spot this trend and be proactive instead of reactive. 

In another example, powerful business management software can help you develop intelligent solutions to common problems. Like, re-routing deliveries and supplies. The result is you might be able to avoid more considerable bottlenecks within your organization.

Productivity Gains

One component in business growth is the overseeing of productivity. Examining the past two decades, one of the biggest drivers of business growth throughout North America has been technology implementation. The pace of technological change is only increasing due to the demand in expanding the company’s overall production.

The first step in leveraging these gains is to extend a business software solution that allows more efficiency in your productivity. The result is more flexibility with things like departments and multi-location. Or functionalities like knitting units together or margin price adjustments on the fly. 

Finding the Right Growth Opportunities

Not all growth opportunities are created alike. Some growth opportunities – such as distributing a product via new channels and platforms – might make sense for your business. However, other growth opportunities might lead to many problems for your business if you lack the resources or the ability to allocate them appropriately. For that reason, many SMB owners are now turning to ERPs. Quickly, business owners see the ROI from a well implemented solution.

With a bit of scenario testing, you can stress-test various business strategies and find out which method is optimal. For example, is it better to sell a higher volume of a low-margin product or a lower volume of a high-margin product? With business management software, you have the data, insights, and information to answer these questions in a way that makes sense for your business.

Key Growth Considerations to Keep in Mind

If you are preparing for rapid growth and significant changes in volume, you will want an integrated business solution to help you quickly include new functions and departments; deal with sudden or fluctuating demand, and provide transparency into crucial business processes. Of course, you will need a business management software solution that provides accurate, real-time data for optimal decision-making.

Reach Your True Growth Potential

In conclusion, business management software is all about helping your SMB reach its true growth potential. Instead of giving up new opportunities, you can quickly scale into future growth. You can do so in a natural, organic manner that leaves your company plenty of ability to navigate new market twists and turns.

Try Spire FREE for 30 days and start growing your business.

 

The Five Best Tips to Grow Your Business

There are five tips for growing your business that will help you get products to market faster, win more customers, boost your margins and deliver a superior experience to every stakeholder. Your competitors won’t know what just happened to them if you follow these five tips to grow your business:

1. Focus on the Customer Experience

As a rule of thumb, it’s seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, so your business should be laser-focused on offering the best possible customer experience and encouraging your most passionate customers to become advocates and ambassadors for your business.

That means understanding what makes your best customers tick—what are their hopes, interests and expectations? Some businesses even go so far as to create customer personas that help them identify the specific types of people (ex. a single mother who works full-time and only buys premium products for her kids) that are the best customers for their business.

2. Keep an Eye on Your Cash Flow

One of the most important financial reports of any company is the statement of cash flows. It lets you know exactly how your company is converting cash into profits. Ultimately, cash flow is what lets you pay employees and vendors, pay off debts and invest in new equipment. If your business is burning cash too quickly, that could be an early warning sign that there are significant financial problems within your business.

3. Invest in a Reporting Analytics Package

Data matters more than ever in today’s hyper-competitive business landscape. With big data, you’ll be able to help you identify new customer segments, new niches, and new ways to expand. At the very least, it will give you a real-time look at how your business is performing and enable you to perform sophisticated report analysis.

4. Optimize Your Supply Chain

Just-in-time is the buzzword in inventory management and it’s a great strategy to increase efficiency and reduce inventory costs. If you have too much inventory (think of warehouses overflowing with products), you are going to tie up too much cash and impede the growth of your business. If you have too little inventory (think of nearly empty warehouses), you are going to have a very difficult time re-stocking your retail shelves. The solution is just-in-time inventory management, in which products appear exactly when they are needed. To make that a reality, you need to optimize your supply chain, so that products can make their way to your warehouse just in time.

5. Always be Innovating

In business, there’s no time to just stand still. You need to be constantly innovating, constantly pushing the envelope of what’s possible with your business. Think about what new products you can offer customers, what new niches you can explore, and how you can surprise and delight your customers.

By getting every part of your business—sales, marketing, finance, operations—working together seamlessly, you can guarantee the future success of your business, no matter how big or small it is.

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