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For business owners in Asia Pacific, there are a few common refrains when it comes to their software systems.
“Our inventory system is very manual – there is a lot of duplication with data entry.”
“We use a basic accounting package for cash/POS transactions and our CRM is totally disconnected from our other systems.”
“It takes us ages to pull financial operational reports to assess our performance.”
If you rely on a basic accounting package to run your business, now might be the time to consider other options, such as moving the processes that are key to your business operations to an integrated system like ERP (Enterprise Resource Processing) that will give you complete visibility into every aspect of your business.
The challenges for a fast-growing business can be diverse. G2, an online review platform with more than 650,000 independent and authenticated user reviews read by more than 3 million users each month, recently demonstrated that fast-growing businesses face many of the same challenges as their enterprise counterparts. In the report, The Power of a Cloud ERP Suite, G2 identifies supporting growth and improving productivity and efficiency while lowering costs as the key challenges. No surprises here.
Yet, many businesses in Asia Pacific continue to rely on basic accounting packages to manage business operations. In fact, smaller and midsized businesses often rely on a patchwork of standalone software silos and spreadsheets to solve their immediate business needs, according to the G2 report. As the business and its complexity grows, these disparate systems create operational inefficiencies that can have a negative impact on the bottom line, hurt the customer experience and impede the company’s ability to reach its full potential.
What are the signs that your business has outgrown its accounting package?
- Limited configuration capability – The limited functionality of a dedicated accounting package means that it will be unable to deliver robust financial management requirements such as consolidation, support for multiple forms of depreciation, budget roll-ups, subscription billing or credit limits, to name a few. If you cannot fulfil these tasks with ease, your accounting software is restricting your flexibility and growth.
- Limited visibility to make informed decisions – As business models become more complex, owners often need customised reports by role and quality data to deliver fact-based analysis and insights. As the gap between the reporting that is provided and the insights required grows, the business turns to spreadsheets and other workaround tools. How long can your business survive without accurate and insightful reporting?
- Spending too much time to keep the system running – Growth across transactions, departments, supply chain, other channels and customers can strain an accounting platform to the point where performance is degraded, or workarounds are designed to circumvent its limitations. Are you spending too much time reconciling data between systems?
- Inability to expand to new markets – Whether you want to open a new location, sell to intermediaries or directly to customer via an online presence, businesses need to understand and comply with the unique needs of each channel. Can your accounting software cater to these needs including support tax, financial and compliance needs? If it can’t, you may need to consider a robust financial management (ERP) solution.
- Technology downtime starts risking business opportunity – It is said that time is money. What smaller businesses lack in size, they can make up for in responding to new opportunities or customer demands much faster than their enterprise counterparts. Often support is overlooked or even non-existent when it comes to basic accounting software offerings. Do you want to risk it?
If any of these signs impact your business, the time has come for you to consider your options – a platform that delivers financials, customer relationship management, inventory and warehouse management and ecommerce capabilities in a single solution.
Join fast growing businesses in Hong Kong, Asia Pacific and across the globe by selecting a technology system that will propel you to new heights.
Determine whether your business has outgrown its accounting package.
