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 And they're the reasons for the rapid rise in digital transformation; simply put, outdated legacy systems aren't up to the job.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?
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:
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:
Can you afford that?
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:
Benefits that are tougher to measure include:
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.”
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.