3 Signs It’s Time to Adopt a Cloud ERP System

April 19, 2023

Are you a fast growing company with a continually evolving business model?

Do your departments consistently rely on spreadsheets for operational and financial information?

Does your company rely on e-mail as a system of record?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, it might be time to adopt a full-scale business management system. While adopting a cloud ERP system sounds like a daunting and expensive affair, it is not as risky or costly as one might think. Below are some top reasons why you should consider a cloud ERP system.

3 Signs You Might Need a Cloud ERP

1) Scalability

Rapid growth often causes struggles in personnel, processes, and technology. Many fast-growing companies find it difficult to manage an evolving business without making changes to the existing business infrastructure. Making smart changes is key.

Implementing a cloud ERP that can scale with your business can help you manage increased demand by improving business efficiencies, and avoiding process issues and delays that could cause business risk and lost profits. Imagine being able to double the revenue of a company — from $10 million to $20 million — while adding only a single accounting or administrative personnel to support that growth. It may seem “pie in the sky” for many business owners, but a cloud ERP system, like NetSuite, can streamline processes, remove bottlenecks and automate tasks, allowing you to focus on growth plans rather than inefficiencies and back office systems.

“As we opened additional locations, our users and data set were also expanding. QuickBooks couldn’t keep up and was crashing daily. Each of our locations needed its own QuickBooks file and consolidating all of those files for reporting was a major challenge. We outgrew QuickBooks as we grew, and we realized it wasn’t sustainable for our business anymore. That’s when we moved to NetSuite.”

Crystal Robinson, CFO
Alloy Wheel Repair Specialists

Read the Alloy Wheel Case Study

2) Death by Spreadsheet

Managing a business with a trusty spreadsheet is a common occurrence when starting out but managing a multi-million dollar business using spreadsheets introduces a tremendous amount of risk to an organization. Spreadsheets are easy-to-use but are problematic because they don't have advanced business logic to validate data.

Upgrading from spreadsheets to a cloud ERP can provide you with advanced analysis and reporting tools and real-time visualizations to discover business issues, identify new opportunities, and build processes for ongoing learning and feedback. Check out our SuiteAnalytics Workbook Expressinar to learn more.

3) Email as a System of Record

E-mail is a great, easy, and efficient way to communicate with customers, vendors, and employees; however, it can also be a big time suck and potential pitfall for an organization. Searching through e-mail to confirm whether a customer received an invoice or the accounting team was asked to correct a revenue figure can be a time-consuming audit. NetSuite allows for collaboration and communication natively in the application helping alleviate the pitfalls that coincide with e-mail as a business system of record.

Benefits of a Cloud Deployment

Many companies have invested tremendous development time and money to make their software cloud available. However, it is difficult for applications not natively built in the cloud to achieve a true multi-tenant cloud architecture. For instance, if you have Dynamics SL on premise, you can pay to have the software hosted off-site and upgraded periodically; however, you will need third-party software like Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Server to access the application.

Because NetSuite was built for a multi-tenant cloud, users can access the software anywhere through a major internet browser. NetSuite releases new features and semi-annual updates without additional upgrade fees, giving all users access to the same version. With NetSuite's accessibility and universal upgrade features, you can spend technology dollars on innovation instead of third-party applications, like Citrix.