We live in a world of immediacy. Customers want to know where their order is now. Employees get frustrated when they can’t find the information they need to get their job done faster.

If your business is full of bottlenecks that slow down business processes, your customers and your employees will eventually lose patience. An ERP system will help you eliminate those bottlenecks to build customer and employee satisfaction.

Delays that hurt business

Sometimes the delays that are affecting your customers and employees are not obvious. Before your business suffers, look for the bottlenecks in your organization. Common problem areas that affect customers include:

• Inventory availability – Does someone have to go out to the warehouse to check to see if the stock you need really is on the shelf? How long does it take someone to find an item they need in the warehouse?
• Order status – How many systems does the customer service rep need to check to see if an order is complete and ready for shipment? Customers want answers fast.
• Schedules – Are your customers notified quickly when there is a change in schedule? Most customers don’t mind a delay, but they need to know about it to plan accordingly.

Bottlenecks that are affecting employees are likely to be in the following areas:

• Sales reports – Does the sales manager know if every salesperson is on target? The sales manager can’t identify reps that need help if she doesn’t have current information.
• Budget updates – Do your managers have to guess whether they still have enough in the budget to hire a prime candidate who just became available? Opportunities don’t wait.
• Documents with no version control “ Are your sales people worried each time they send a proposal that they may have missed one of the changes made during the back and forth of edits? Employees need to have confidence in the systems that support their hard work.

An ERP system brings all the information that your employees need together in one place. From inventory to budgets, information is ready to share with customers and support better decisions. Let’s talk about how you can make life easier for your employees and customers.

Published on 19th April 2013 by Jeanne DeWitt.