For finance departments that are still relying on spreadsheets and reports from various departments within a company, the added visibility from a cloud-based ERP system is a game-changer

Many people don’t prevent problems by making adjustments early, however. Instead, they wait until there is a crisis. Is Your Business Practicing Prevention?

ERP systems are complex and marry deeply with your business processes, even cloud-based ERP solutions built as turnkey solutions. This makes ERP evaluation tricky, because you first must have a solid grasp of the needs and current situation of your business. Here’s where you should start.

So there are cloud ERP alternatives. No SMB should feel like they must use enterprise resource planning software. These alternatives just are not pretty. So if you’re set on avoiding cloud ERP for your SMB, here are some alternatives.

Multi-channel is cold, impersonal businesses as usual. Omni-channel is business as friend. And business as friend is what consumers now want. The trick is that consumer products distributors need a unified system of record to make omni-channel work.

One big concern is the rising cost of materials, and how the ongoing trade war might affect supply chains. This rising cost eats into profit margins, and it also makes accurate cost estimates more challenging for manufacturers.

Manufacturing products is the easy step for consumer products manufacturers. The far greater challenge businesses face is efficiently connecting a company’s manufacturing operation with its supplier network and multiple retail outlets. That’s where things get tricky in a hurry.

Your business is growing and sales are up. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the workload on you and your staff also has increased. This is a good problem, of course. But it begs the question: Should you hire more bodies or invest in technology?