ERP Consultants for Robust Back Office Solutions

Ask SmartBridge Partners, Your Sage ERP Software Consultant, About Meeting These Benchmarks

How do you know when you need to change your Back Office system? Whether you’re evaluating an accounting system or an ERP system, here are some benchmarks that it should be meeting:

• One-day closing. If you spend more time than this every month reconciling and closing your financials, you have a problem.
   
• No spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are useful for budget planning and "what ifs." But if you are using spreadsheets to keep or transfer data around your Back Office system, then you have problems. There are probably data double-entries for extra work, errors, and maybe even inadequate reporting out of the system. If you can't capture data directly into your system, and then usefully access it there, you are limiting yourself.
   
• Reliable inventory. Are you constantly adjusting inventory counts and valuation? Do you reliably know what's in stock when you quote a customer on the phone? Are you constantly chasing down verification that ordered stock arrived and that the invoice is correct? If everybody knows that they can't trust the numbers in your system, then you are losing a lot of money in inefficiency.
   
• Delivering customer service. Shipping orders when promised. Easily quoting customers what their last order and pricing was. Efficiently telling customers where their shipment is. Seamlessly handling credit card orders and drop ships. Delivering orders, invoices and statements to customers the way each one prefers. Smoothly handling returns and repairs.
   
• ERP operations parallel your physical operations. Your Back Office system is running well when your people don't have to enter any data that’s not part of a natural, physical process. Sales Orders turn naturally to shipping documents and then to invoices. PO's are easily accessed to document (through bar codes) the order’s receipt at the shipping dock. AP invoices match up naturally against computer records of receipts. Bank reconciliations are natural process permitting additions that naturally arise in the procedure. And more. If your people tie themselves in knots trying to get their data into your current system, you need to make changes to stop the cycle of wasting effort and losing information.
   

MAS Accounting Software Integration

Beyond the Benchmarks. Of course details matter with ERP and accounting. Capturing financially-related data, making it easily accessible only by those authorized, and getting it to them when they want it is hard. Here area a few detail areas that we can weave into your ERP solution:

• Payroll. Whether you do payroll in house or use a payroll service, we have options to make the payroll cycle smooth, efficient, and integrated.
   
• Time capture. Your hourly employees must file their time somehow. We work with lots of different options to streamline its capture, system entry, and appropriate allocation to different jobs
   
• HR integration. Reducing the time needed to administer benefits for your employees is an obvious way to increase efficiency. Streamlining the handling changes in deductions, eliminating paper, and enabling employee self-service for routine questions and changes is easier than you think.
   
• Workflow/paperless office. It's time. If you eliminate your paper, you’ll save buckets of money. You'll also improve customer service and employee sanity. We can help you decide the right approach for you to achieve those goals.
   
• Business Alerts. Automate the flow of reporting and send alerts to the right people about important events such as low stock levels, inadequate profit margin in a quote, overdue orders and much, much more.
   

ERP BI

Distribution. Manufacturing. Projects. We don't talk much about "accounting systems" because the term is misleading when you get down to what your business really needs to get out of the data generated by them. Sure, at the end of the day, your debits and credits must go accurately into financial reports. What you really want is to efficiently enable your employees to save money, increase customer retention, and translate physical operations into information that you can use for decision making. ERP BI may be the most valuable thing you get out of your ERP system because it affects every area of your back office operations and your bottom line.

The ERP BI needed to achieve your goals is quite different in a distribution-based firm compared to a manufacturing operation or an organization that creates value for its customers by designing and executing projects and service plans. Our ERP consultants can help make sure you have the information and customization to get what you need, based on the kind of company you have.

• Distribution companies rely on a reliable, transparent inventory system, and streamlined ordering and shipping.
   
• Make to Stock (MTS) manufacturing operations also need support from Bills of Materials, work orders, and scheduling mechanisms tied firmly to supply ordering.
   
• Make to Order (MTO), or Job Shop manufacturing need all those and a streamlined way to create profitable orders based on both history and the unique needs of the customer’s request today. It requires a way to manage parts ordering and resource scheduling that considers orders and quotes outstanding, plus longer-term expectations. Of course, most of that data is needed in what is actually used compared to what was budgeted.
   
• Project-based operations vary greatly. At a minimum, they need to track deliverables, employee time, and other resources by project, then compare the actual used. Many need sophisticated methods of calculating and applying overhead to a project, and government work generally requires a process to meet DCAA standards.
   

ERP Data Migration

The documents and business processes you use to do your actual work should naturally fit into your ERP systems as you do it, and should then result in the accounting data needed for invoicing customers, paying vendors and employees, and meeting your needs for financial planning without having to supplement and adjust.

If your current system requires you to run your operations on spreadsheets, and then separately enter data into your accounting system you're ready for a change. SmartBridge ERP consultants can make sure that your system not only does all of these things, but that the ERP data migration is handled smoothly, with the correct information going to the correct places and people. We can even help with deduplication if we’re handling your ERP data migration. Just ask your Sage ERP Software Consultant.