Facing the challenges of shifting market conditions and rising costs?

Now more than ever, investing in an ERP system will reduce costs and produce great ROI

To say it's been a topsy-turvy couple of years is somewhat of an understatement. Worldwide, organisations have had to deal with the challenges of a global pandemic, escalating European conflict and uncertain market conditions. As businesses evolve to meet these challenges, there's naturally an increasing reluctance to spend. The more market uncertainty exists, and the higher the business costs, the tighter the purse strings.

This is understandable. Organisations want to shore up their resources because they don't know what might be around the corner. Supply chain disruptions, the skills shortage, a hyper-competitive market, increased customer demand - these are just a few of the realities of 'the new normal'. And they're the reasons for the rapid rise in digital transformation; simply put, outdated legacy systems aren't up to the job. If you're trying to squeeze every last drop out of yours because you're reluctant to invest in innovation, you may be overtaken by your competitors. Rising costs and difficult market conditions are precisely the reasons that you need to be on a committed digital transformation journey. Investing now will produce reduced operating costs, great access to information leading to earlier and better decision making and efficiency and maximised profitability allowing you to lead your competitors.

What it comes down to is this: what will happen if you don't invest in purpose-built digital technology?

The challenge - offsetting rising costs to ensure continuing profit

You're facing ballooning costs in the areas of shipping, transport, raw materials, employee costs, and business processes. Not only that, but if you're still using disparate systems that don't talk to each other and this could mean you’ll be experiencing high levels of waste. They're not fit for modern digital commerce, and they don't have the flexibility of cloud-based delivery. They hamper productivity with poor user experiences, which means they're costing you in terms of time, money, and customers. Forrester recently published a report: The Technology Pivot ANZ Businesses Must Make, and according to their findings, 28% of extra costs are due to inefficient and ineffective solutions. The report states that:

"Despite recognising the importance of investing in unified business and people management solutions, decision-makers face three key barriers to improvement: 1) a lack of leadership support, 2) change management effort, and 3) a short-sighted focus on initial technology costs."

The report also found that:

• Lengthy, manual sales and administration processes are a significant business challenge
• There was insufficient customer targeting for high-value strategic customers
• Poor customer experiences due to outdated, disparate business and people management solutions
• Disparate and manual systems negatively affect sales growth
• Employees waste an average of 12.5 hours per week on manual and repetitive tasks because of outdated solutions and practices

Sound familiar? If so, then now more than ever, your business needs to take a proactive, digital leap with a radical overhaul of your core business systems. Remaining reactive means you face the risk of being left behind.

Failure to modernise means you'll miss out on:

• The dollar savings that come with going digital
• The competitive advantage of bringing an ERP system on board
• The revenue from new customers and increased spending of existing ones
• The potential savings by reducing cost-to-serve

Can you afford that?

The ROI of bringing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system on board

Jerry Maguire famously said, "show me the money!" and of course, dollar savings and increased revenue are of fundamental importance. But the benefits don't end there. Determining the overall ROI is not always easy, because many of the benefits are intangible and not quantifiable.

With that said, some of the tangible benefits of deploying an ERP system include:

• Reduced level of inventory, including raw material, work in progress, and finished goods, through inventory optimisation
• Reduced materials cost through improved procurement and accounts payable practices, and less wastage
• Reduced labour cost through better allocation of employees' time
• Improved production efficiency via better scheduling of critical equipment and sub-contracting operations
• Reduction in the cost of after-sales services
• Increased sales and margin through accuracy, better customer service, inventory optimisation

Benefits that are tougher to measure include:

• Integration of information resulting in efficiency gains including greater throughput
• The reduction of errors and improved accuracy of inventory records
• Improved customer service and retention of customers
• Establishment of standardised procedures, reducing the reliance on the individual, and often increasing the valuation of the business through robust repeatable processes being in place
• Improved accounting control and shorter order to cash cycles
• Increased employee engagement, retention, and job satisfaction by removing the mundane elements of people’s roles, and attracting new talent through modern, effective business systems being in place

One of our clients, Golden Bay Fruit, realised many of these benefits after we helped them migrate from a legacy system to MYOB Advanced ERP.

"One of the major benefits has been the efficiencies that we've been able to create within the company," says Steve Hayden, Finance Manager of Golden Bay Fruit. "We haven't had to employ another person in the accounting team. We've managed to get rid of all the manual input of invoices and bank statements using technology... it has paid itself off in less than a year."

Another of our clients, the Auckland Rugby Union, are also reaping the rewards of greater efficiency and cost savings with MYOB Advanced.

“The ERP gives us back a day or two every week,” says Paula Kent, Head of Business Support & Planning. “We aren’t spending so much time on manual processes. It’s intuitive, easy to use – it makes my life easy.”

What can you do with increased time and money savings?

When you implement an ERP system to streamline your business processes and unify your business and people management, you'll rapidly see significant advantages in productivity and cost efficiencies, priming your organisation for growth. What this means is you'll be in a position to redeploy resources in order to maximise profits and growth, rather than using them purely for operational tasks. Your teams can focus on high-value, core tasks that accelerate growth, because they're no longer wasting time on repetitive, manual jobs.

Now is the time for a change. If you really want to offset rising costs, uncertain market conditions, and a fiercely competitive environment, going digital is not an option - it's a necessity. Investing in purpose-built ERP technology now will deliver a significant ROI, and sooner than you think.

Ready to invest in the future of your business? Let's talk.