Is my business too small for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software tool?

Unequivocally, NO! Think about the software you use.  Every application you use is there to help you perform a task faster and more efficiently, whether it is Facebook to connect with friends or Office software to produce documents.  Your Software is a tool!

Don’t let the title “Enterprise Resource Planning” intimidate you.  As the owner of your business you need to be focused on its core competency – the reason you got into business in the first place.  One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is the lack of financial resources to hire the staff required to operate as effectively as you would prefer, requiring you to do the jobs of numerous people.  This very demand for your time everywhere is why your small business should look to leverage every advantage you can.  ERP enables you to enforce consistency, manage protocols and track your resources, so you can have time to make more important decisions like how to best grow your business.  At the right price and with the right team, ERP business management software tools can deliver the support you need to help you stay focused on what’s more important to you!

The business processes that supported your company’s growth from 1 to 5, 5 to 10 or 10 to 15 employees are probably getting more and more stressed as different scenarios come up that were not thought of when the company was just a “Couple of people”.  These business processes are most likely not going to scale in order to get you to 25, 50, 100 or more employees.

There will come the day when the growth path of your company will force the business owner or senior executives to sit down and review.  As a proactive owner or senior executive getting a sense that things aren’t working as smoothly as they used to, is the typical start to this process.

As the business starts to struggle under the complexity of its own growth, it is most likely time to re-evaluate the company business processes and business software infrastructure to support current requirements and future growth plans.

Let’s cut through the hype! This issue, Document management – what is the minimum you should expect!

By Wayne Dinzey, President,

DPD Software Ltd.

Paper and the need to manage paper documents will for a long time remain a job that needs to be managed in your business operation.  The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) accepts records that are produced and kept in paper format; paper format, and later converted to and stored in an accessible and readable electronic format; and an accessible and readable electronic format. You can contact the Canadian General Standards Board to purchase the guidelines defined to ensure legal compliance if your intention is to destroy originals but the benefits to your business even if your documents were only for internal use are tremendous.

Apart from meeting our legal requirements of auditability by the Government of Canada there is one very important application for electronically storing documents in your business.  Accessing documents when you actually need them without too much delay is still a very important thing today.  How many times do you need to find a document and must recall some files, somewhere in some filing system in order to get to it? Would it not be nice if this was simpler?

The good news is that with document management systems today it is possible to electronically store all relevant documents in electronic formats but what is a “good document management system”.  It is impossible for me to define what a good document management system is but I can give you a few ideas of what you should expect for your ERP system.

After 20 years as a Sage Development Partner, we severed our partnership as Sage was forcing our company to adopt a new ERP System with the removal (End of Life) from the market of their product that we sold and supported.  Being forced to learn a new system meant to us that it was an ideal time to shop around.  In 2013 we chose to become a HansaWorld Partner as we found them to have the most “Modern” software we had reviewed.  So, what is Modern Software?

This is a really difficult question to answer for two reasons.  Firstly, the concept of "modern" is a moving target, with every new idea and innovation the exact definition of "modern" will change. Secondly, modern is a term that means different things to different people - here we will argue that when the term "Modern" is used in conjunction with the word "Software", we are referring to software that offers support for modern concepts within the software industry.  The following material describes a few of these concepts, which, although not an exhaustive list, will give you a good feel for the extent to which modern ideas are influencing and moving the Information Technology arena today.  Note, we deliberately avoided addressing "Cloud Computing" as this is a vast service offering that includes most of what is defined below.