Posts tagged ERP

Nothing like a pen and paper, is there?

Over the years, I have been amazed at the companies that I have worked with as a consultant or interacted with in another capacity, who had not scaled their business processes and systems as their company grew. Important data moved around on Excel spreadsheets, in emails or, worse yet, written on paper! It was mind boggling because a computer with the necessary software could be purchased for several hundred dollars.

The problem was not usually the money though. It was that everybody in the business was so wrapped up in getting things done from day to day that nobody focused on how things were getting done. I can understand that to some degree when a business is small. There is a lot to be done and not many people to get it done.

At some point though, that has to change. And that change has to be considered right at the beginning. Someone that has a vision of where the company is headed and what it will need as it grows, has to put together a rough idea of what the company will need in place process-wise as the company grows. For instance, when a business is five guys in an office, yelling to Fred to come over and look at a document might work. When the company has 100 employees and 10 offices, that’s not going to work out as well. Especially, if 20 employees spread across those 10 offices is going to have input into the contents of that document. (more…)