Top 3 Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Current Systems

Having the right software and technology is essential to growing a business – yet many companies feel the constraints of inadequate systems. Outdated applications, manual processes, and countless integration challenges consume time and resources. So how do you know when you’ve reached the tipping point? This blog series will take you through the top 5 signs you’ve outgrown your systems.

Sign 1: Recurring Headaches About Reporting

As your organization grows, data, calculations, and transactions also grow, in both volume and complexity. If your decision makers must constantly make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate data, or delay decisions until full and accurate reports become available, then critical business decisions are compromised.

Timeliness and accuracy of data have a direct impact on the ability to make better-informed decisions, reports analyst firm Aberdeen Group. The group also notes that best-in-class companies are taking strides to reduce time to information, generate a common view of data, and arm business decision makers with high-quality data to support enhanced business performance.

Aberdeen Group reports that 75% of best-in-class companies are able to edit, share, store, and finalize content to provide users across multiple business units with the tools and information to do their jobs1 – making timely reporting a key component of best-in-class operations.

To alleviate headaches about reporting, organizations must replace “gut feel” choices with fact-based decisions by providing visibility into key business results. Rapidly growing small businesses and midsize companies can improve reporting and increase visibility by replacing multiple spreadsheets and data reconciliation with a single integrated solution that provides timely access to accurate information and business intelligence.

Sign 2: Numerous Integration Hassles

A second sign that you’ve outgrown your current systems and infrastructure is significant time spent integrating disparate systems and aligning data from multiple sources. If your company has grown through one or more acquisitions or is running different systems in various areas of operation, you may be spending too much time troubleshooting and maintaining integration points – and not enough looking for opportunities to reduce costs and improve productivity.

Over half of the small and midsize companies participating in an independent Forrester Research survey reported the “ability to integrate with other systems” as a very important criterion when selecting potential software.2 Forrester also listed “improving integration between applications” as one of the top four business goals of IT departments.

A single comprehensive application can handle all key business activities, eliminating the complexity and expense of integrating multiple systems. You spend less time on system maintenance and more time planning and implementing innovative functionality. With fewer integration points, a company can focus on systematic reviews of business processes, identifying and prioritizing opportunities to cut waste, redundancy, and costs.

Sign 3: Rigid Systems That Limit Flexibility

Your company is poised to push into new markets, introduce fresh products and services, and bring on new personnel. But expanding into a new region or product line means dealing with a rigid system – and substantial IT effort. Without proper support, initial results are not up to par with what they should be. Line-of-business managers don’t want to postpone their operations for system support, new employees can’t access data they need to fulfill their duties and IT is caught trying to figure out another workaround.

You need a solution versatile enough to grow with you – a highly configurable and easy-to-use system that adapts quickly to your organization without the need to purchase or integrate additional software. Supporting new languages and currencies should ensue with the click of a mouse, not after hours of coding and personalization. A solution with a modular design makes it simple to focus on your most pressing needs by starting small, and then add users and functions as your organization grows.