ERP, it’s over: How owners knew

We're all familiar with the saying, "the straw that broke the camel's back". While certainly not the most animal-friendly of metaphors, it paints a picture of what many established businesses face today.

Every one of us will eventually experience a pivotal moment that has been a long time coming.

This one ahh-haaa moment may seem isolated. But in reality, it's a culmination of many events over the past several years. These occurrences demonstrated that the operational methods and one-time state-of-the-art technologies that once helped us grow our companies just don't cut it in today's business environment. 

Ditch Duplicate Efforts

It had become a daily grind. And everyone just took for granted that this was how things worked. That was especially true for those who had worked for the company for years. Those newer to the company often came in scratching their heads. But eventually, it just felt normal to do things this way.

What were these questionable procedures?

Because the legacy ERP was locked to a local server, salespeople out in the field had to call into the office to access information or log data. So, it took two people to do the job of one.

On top of that, what should have been simple one-and-done data entry, often required multiple people transferring information manually among multiple systems.

This not only led to increased employee costs and delayed access to data. It also increased the risk of human error and employee frustration. 

With more employees working remotely and increasingly mobile society, it became apparent that their ERP and procedures needed an overhaul.

U.S. Navy Supplier Tired of Incompatibility Issues

One company has a big job to do. The U.S. Navy relies on them to deliver critical components on schedule. With National Defense on the line, there's no room for error or delays. 

When they bought their legacy ERP years ago, everyone was astounded by its capabilities. But having been created over 20 years ago, the developers of yesteryear just couldn't have foreseen what a modern business would need out of their ERP system.

Automated interdepartmental communication, cross-departmental analytics, real-time business intelligence, enhanced vendor/customer relationship management, mobile employees---these weren't considerations at the time. And no amount of retrofitting changes that.

Their antiquated ERP simply wasn't meeting the needs of the company both interdepartmental and within the departments, leading to workarounds and added costs. 

When they did a cost-benefit analysis, they realized that the company was spending more money sticking with the old system than it would if they transitioned. This cost came in the form of technology maintenance and incompatibility challenges. But they also realized that they had tremendous lost productivity, bottlenecks, and potential for human error.

Not everyone was on board with the change at first. But leadership knew it was time for a change. Their license was expiring soon, so they had a choice to make. Continue down this path or make a transition to smoother operations with a modern cloud ERP.

Manufacturer’s Changing of the Guard Brings New Life to a Legacy Company

That final straw doesn't always have to be something negative. It can be a life-affirming event.

For one manufacturing company, the ah-ha moment was at the changing of the guard. After 30 years in business, a moment that founder had dreamed of finally arrived. His son, who had joined him over a decade before and had helped grow the business, was ready to take over the company. 

This transition presented challenges. But it also provided the perfect opportunity to review operations across the company and see where improvement could be made.

Over the past several years, the company had diversified across industries. They needed to strengthen their position, regardless of economic ups and downs. But this also meant more complicated inventory management. Their legacy ERP simply could no longer handle the complexities.

The founder admits that when he invested in their legacy ERP so many years ago, he couldn't imagine they would ever outgrow it. But it was time to bring the company into a new era to further improve the service they delivered to their customers.

Many Reasons...One Customizable Solution

Each of these businesses had their reasons. And understandably, it took some time for them to realize that their antiquated ERP systems were no longer enhancing productivity. They were holding them back.

Ultimately, each of them decided it was time to move to a modern ERP with Algorithm's support. Algorithm worked with them to understand what they needed, and it helped them put the solutions in place they needed to improve how they do business and get the results they wanted.

Are redundant workflows costing you money? Are you spending more time, money, and stress trying to get newer software to communicate with your outdated ERP?

Has your company recently changed leadership, and you're ready to re-evaluate processes to optimize for the future?

We're all faced with the defining moments. Reading the ERP tea leaves isn't that difficult.