Growing pains are good, especially if your company is able to take on more clients, more employees, more sales, and more revenue. We’ll take more of all of these, please.
But there are often challenges with longevity, starting with some people getting stuck in the “this is how it always has been and always should be” ways of thinking.
This can create some tension between new arrivals, who often bring fresh skills and insight, and those who have been around longer, are more familiar with the culture, and had a direct role in getting the company where it is now.
On the people side, owners and managers must walk a fine line in getting everyone to play nice, recognize the contributions of the more senior staff as well as help newcomers feel welcome, and make sure everyone feels part of the same team. Especially since, if things continue going well, today’s newcomers will someday be among the old-timers in the future.
This type of dynamic can usually be resolved with equal attention to everyone, maybe some new policies, and perhaps a company party or two to break some of the ice.
What’s less easy to resolve is the technical side, especially if, while your company evolved, your hardware and software lagged behind.
Because of growing in spurts and likely on a tight budget, you may have created a situation where you have different lower-end programs for different processes. These programs may have worked adequately when you had a smaller team with basic needs, but as you grew, you either needed to add more complex programs or adapt what you have, even if they weren’t necessarily designed for some what you wanted to do with them.
Odds are, if you’re like most fiscal-minded companies, the second solution won out, maybe because it looked like it required less money, less disruption, less time, and solved immediate problems.
So here you are now, with different programs for accounting, for customer orders and invoices, for inventory management, for payroll. And some of them may not ‘speak’ to each other so there’s a lot of duplicate work done as well as manual inputting. Not having programs that sync well also increases the possibility of errors, which could damage your reputation as well as mess up your financial ledgers.
You make decisions that impact your business everyday, and sometimes the right choice isn’t clear because your business intelligence is trapped inside pesky spreadsheets and littered across multiple departments. But with the right integrated, cloud ERP solution, you can consolidate disparate systems and gain a 360-degree view of your entire business. From orders, fulfillment, tracking and shipping, to marketing, sales, accounting and e-commerce, MIBAR gives you the tools and technologies to automate workflow and empower smart decision-making.
Better connected systems can improve efficiency and productivity. They can reduce the possibility of errors and improve employee morale, especially if the staff is frustrated with the current systems.
Case Study: Plastic distributor and manufacturer successfully implements a single, integrated solution with MIBAR and Acumatica Cloud ERP
Acme Plastics is a leading plastics and acrylic distributor and manufacturer offering customers a one stop plastics center for any brand, shape, or product. Serving customers with a proud heritage of customer service and reliability since 1943, they have grown over the years to include an expansive warehouse and manufacturing facility in New Jersey and Florida.
As their business growth continued, Acme Plastics was faced with some back-office challenges.
First, they were using 3-4 legacy solutions that were all disconnected. They used Macola, on-premise, to handle billing and accounting, another solution for manufacturing, eCommerce, and more. This created countless processing silos and their days were riddled with redundancy and manual processes around. Another issue caused by these legacy systems was the complete lack of automation.
In addition to the disparate systems, over the years, quite a bit of custom code was developed as a temporary band-aid for many of these issues. These customizations were prone to breaking during upgrades. Therefore, custom code had to be painfully redeployed, costing extra time, money, and resources. On the other hand, some upgrades had to be postponed indefinitely, so they were stuck in a vicious cycle of “version-lock” and unable to modernize their business.
Acme Plastics needed a single, modern cloud-based ERP solution that could automate their processes, systemize and digitize their fabrication and cutting services, integrate with their eCommerce platform, streamline replenishment, and more.
The company worked with MIBAR, a leading Acumatica Certified Partner, to plan and implement and manage Acumatica’s Manufacturing Edition.
Since migrating from Macola and their other legacy systems, the company has seen many benefits including:
- Successfully implemented a single, integrated, cloud-based ERP solution, eliminating multiple legacy systems, database silos, and manual reconciliation processes.
- Eliminated manual, paper-based workflows, saving time and money
- Gained connection to their Miva eCommerce platform, eliminating the manual reprocessing of orders
- New MDC capabilities (integrated shop floor materials scanning & data collection) eliminates back-office data entry, provides real-time data, and gives stakeholders visibility into profitability on finished goods
- Streamlined accounting and reporting across their business units, reducing errors and inaccuracies in consolidated financial statements.
Click here to view the full case study.
Overcome the Challenges of Disparate Business Systems Today
If you’re feeling any of this pain, the challenges of using disparate business systems is not new to you. As one of the top value-added ERP resellers in the nation, helping companies overcome these challenges is what we do.
What we’ve talked about in this blog will reinforce what you already know – you’ve outgrown your stack of disparate (and likely legacy) systems. It’s time to upgrade to a modern cloud ERP solution to simplify your business and drive growth.
Schedule a free consultation to get started. We get to know your business, understand your needs and challenges, and offer honest answers throughout the process.
