Headaches Running Your Growing Business with Your Current “Systems”

So you’ve got a growing business and you want to run your operation more smoothly. Maybe you started off as a 1 to 5 employee shop, and have outgrown your current systems and procedures.

Any small business can fall into one of two categories:

1. An efficient enterprise with happy customers and organized employees.  You get orders out on time and with little or no errors.

2. An operation that struggles on a day-to-day basis to keep up.  Orders get out…eventually, and with a lot of extra “blood, sweat and tears”.  Schedules are hectic and orders have more mistakes on them than they should.  Both customers and employees are stressed out!

Now picture what your business COULD be, Imagine it as a smooth-running, well-oiled machine, humming in unison with picture-perfect productivity. Data is entered once, orders are accurately processed, customers are happy, and profits rise.

Sound like a fantasy?

Perhaps a more realistic picture of your current operation is a daily struggle to keep your head above water. Orders are taken, data is entered and then re-entered into several systems and things move at a slower-than-ideal pace. Let’s take a look at an example…

Kathy Customer finds your website and places an order for 100 of your locally branded t-shirts. The order is received and data is entered into multiple software programs: Excel, Goldmine, Quickbooks, etc., etc. Kathy calls, asking for an update on her order. The computers are checked, but the status update has not migrated to ALL the applications handling Kathy’s order. Misinformation is erroneously given. And Kathy ends up receiving her order a day or two later than expected. This is an all-too-common problem that has nothing to do with your level of competence as a business manager, but, rather, the level of confusion caused by multiple “solutions” to varying business needs.

Add to that recipe a touch of growth (you do, after all, have a fantastic product or service), and the headaches can start to add up quickly. With growth comes growing pains, and in business those pains manifest themselves in more mistakes, slowing processes, sluggish customer service, and an ever-increasing impatience among your stakeholders. At this point, your old business software systems simply can’t keep up.

Are business growth challenges presenting themselves? There’s a clear-cut answer: one integrated business software solution, tailored to your industry. We at Shopworks developed our OnSite enterprise resource planning system to precisely meet those needs. Stay tuned for our next blog as we explore why OnSite is the best solution for you.

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