SMEs were estimated to be approximately 212.98 million, they represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide, formal SMEs contribute up to 40% of national income (GDP) in emerging economies.
The governments worldwide provide special care to SMEs to enhance their business performance and contribute more to the economy.
So the question remains can ERP grow SMEs?
5 ways ERP grow SMEs
1 – Enhancing their internal process
SMEs should give good care to their internal process and the time it tasks, they should put their internal processes under continuous improvement to enhance customers’ experience and reduce cost and catch unrecognised sales opportunities.
A good SME’s ERP Solution should participate in enhancing SMEs internal processes by reducing the processing time between order till customer delivery and invoicing without mistakes and tracking every order production time.
iXERP with its integrated modules can support SMEs growth as it eases the communication between departments and reduces employee time in documents search by at least 40%, Also it reduces the lead time of any sales order and empowers employees with available information to have better performance.
2 – Increase sales and production
SMEs growth depends on sales and continuous revenue stream to be able to sustain in the hard economy, so forecasting and sales pipeline is a good planning tool to forecast company monthly revenue.
This is not the only way to increase revenue, also inventory monitoring and production planning are good planning tools to make sure there are always products for sales, and they can increase sales opportunities by promoting or bundling the stagnant products.
iXERP can participate heavily in SMEs growth by providing comprehensive sales, inventory and production modules with tight integration with the accounting system to handle the sales orders from the time it is recorded until it is produced, delivered, invoiced and collected, Also through its BI and analytics, it gives SMEs analysis and sales forecast to enhance planning and prediction, even more planning for inventory shortage and critical stock amount to better fulfil pending sales orders.
3 – Close monitor to accounts and cash flow
One of the most important factors for SMEs to enable their growth plan is to monitor accounts, expenditure and cash flow, so they can have an expansion plan in the future, otherwise cost will increase due to random expenditure and they will not have available savings to pursue their plans.
iX ERP enable SMEs to monitor and track expenses and income in several ways and provide the necessary comprehensive monthly data analysis with comparison to the budget with cash flow and on-demand financial reports like profit and loss and balance sheet. This makes it easy for SME owners to decide on the right expenditure and compare it to the planned budget, also can achieve targets by using planning and decision support tools provided by iX ERP.
4 – Analyse and track their KPIs
SMEs should continuously analyse all business aspects and monitor their Key performance indicators (KPIs) to be able to enhance their performance and compete in local and global markets, this will allow SMEs growth across several markets.
iX ERP provides comprehensive analysis with a complete dashboard that includes several KPIs to monitor company performance like Global Financial Ratios, which allows the SME owner to keep an eye on the company financial performance and when is the right time to take the next move.
5 – Develop growth and expansion strategy
If any SME needs to grow they should have a growth strategy and conduct a clear plan, this will tell the organisation when is the right time to take the next step and what is triggering the decision.
iX ERP provides all the data required to support business owners strategy and plans, it is clear that iX ERP cannot take the decision on behalf of the business owner but it gives him a green light to go, iX ERP can give business owners all required triggers and decision support with their growth plan.
Conclusion
ERP grow SMEs in several ways by providing tools and data to support business owner and management team decision making, reduce time and cost, increase sales, monitor cost and expenditure to enhance overall performance, so growth strategy and plans can be achieved in a timely manner.
We created iX ERP as the best tool that enables SMEs growth and has all the tools that support SMEs to perform better and grow faster.