ERP and the SME

Once regarded as the preserve of enterprise-level organisation, the advent of cloud-based computing and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model has made powerful, and previously expensive, enterprise resource planning platforms available and accessible to smaller businesses. Known by some as “democratisation”, outsourced ERP has made enterprise functionality available to companies as small as sole traders.

Great idea, but why bother?

Your business is unique, and so too are the processes underpinning it; no one knows your business like you do. That said, an ERP outsourcer knows enterprise resource planning better than most, allowing their customers to rely on their expertise. Using an outsourced ERP provider also removes the need for employing an in-house ERP expert. The SaaS provider assumes responsibility for hosting the ERP application, maintaining and managing it, and providing support to the end user.
Outsourced ERP allows smaller businesses to enjoy all the benefits of an enterprise class system without having to pay traditional enterprise-level license costs or for the staff traditionally required to maintain and support such a system. Outsourced ERP allows SMEs to focus on running their business, without worrying about the underlying software.

But wait, there’s more!

Traditional Enterprise Resource Planning systems certainly create cost-savings and efficiencies but often only over a significant period of time. By outsourcing ERP SMEs can significantly reduce the time usually associated with such a deployment; the outsourcer assumes responsibility for the implementation, leaving the buyer with a fully functional ERP system from day one.
SMEs using outsourced ERP systems also stand to gain from fringe benefits such as free-of-charge software upgrades, and bundled support services all of which would potentially be very expensive. These additional benefits contribute to reducing the on-going running costs which can be incurred when running ERP software in-house.
Outsourcing has therefore made ERP not only available to the small or medium business, but also affordable. As a result, businesses failing to take advantage of ERP functionality and its associated efficiencies stand to lose out to their competitors in the long run.