Do you want to grow your business? Of course. It’s only natural that you hope your business does better this year than it did the last year. The decision to implement or upgrade ERP often facilitates this growth, allowing users to shift their focus from low-value tactical activities to high-value strategic ones. From the finance staff to the warehouse people to even the sales staff, an ERP implementation can empower people to do more with their time.
Following our last blogs exploring the benefits of the cloud, the reasons companies of all sizes are taking on ERP projects(rather than just the biggest entities), and the customizability of modern ERP, we would today like to discuss why all this matters and why the cloud empowers growing businesses.
How Does the Cloud Make Growth Easy?
Growing businesses that operate in competitive environments thrive on agility—and unfortunately, on-premise legacy systems tend slow them down. Alternatively, the cloud is built to grow with you. Whereas on-premises systems require you to provide your own resources and infrastructure, SaaS-based applications exist in massive data centers that can provide for your business whether you need twice the power, ten times the power, or more.
Cloud-based ERP solutions are inherently flexible—they cater to companies who grow quickly, whose needs change frequently, and whose leaders and rank-and-file employees demand access to the latest tools and resources.
Paired with the ease of implementation (compared to on-premises offerings), the fact that additional costs are shared by hundreds or thousands of companies, and that most of the burdens you place on your IT staff are shared by those at the data center, and it’s easy to build your business on the cloud infrastructure.
Cloud ERP Grows with You: Acumatica Makes Growth Easy
While all cloud ERP options are designed to scale, one of the most important questions to ask it whether costs scale proportionally—or disproportionally. This comes down to a key consideration in the way it’s priced.
There are many factors in the way ERP is priced including how much configuration is needed, how many modules you use, or how many transactions you process. These, however, are mostly upfront costs. The ongoing costs are different. When ERP moved from on-premises to the cloud, many companies moved the pricing structure with it. This resulted in the most common structure—per-user pricing.
The Danger of Disproportional Cost Structures
Much like licenses of the past, per-user pricing is easy to understand—companies are charged for each user. Though this is more flexible than perpetual licenses (you can add or remove users each month as opposed to buying licenses up front), it pays to ask whether this model is good for you.
Often, the answer is ‘no.’ Why? Simple. Look at your current ERP software users and ask yourself the following questions:
- How many people use the software every day?
- How many people log in once a month or less?
Much like the issues that companies face when buying perpetual licenses, paying per-user means you’re often paying just as much for the executive who logs in once a year or the supplier who uses a portal as you pay for the core group of power users.
Why Acumatica Helps Control ERP Costs for Growing Businesses
Acumatica allows unlimited users by following a consumption-based pricing model – you are charged based on the resources your company requires for the transactions you anticipate. And you can always increase or decrease these resources when necessary.
This means that the costs will grow proportionally and incrementally with how much you use the software—not based on the number of users. Considered a fairer way of pricing, this will allow anyone to access the reports they need to see whenever they need to see them, rather than having to wait on a reporting meeting.
Learn more about Acumatica pricing.
Get to Know Acumatica and MIBAR
If you’re like most companies, the last time you looked at ERP was likely six to ten years ago. Things have changed a lot since then. Today’s cloud based options are more secure, reliable, and technologically advanced than their legacy counterparts, and those businesses who make the move are positioning themselves for success.
As a leading implementation partner who serves a variety of ERP options, one of our favorites is Acumatica, a solution built for the growing business. Incredibly flexible and priced for growth, Acumatica can handle the needs of your business today and in the future. Learn more about this solution, our success delivering it for companies, and contact us for a free consultation.
