ERP for software companies could mean the difference between a successful business and one that languishes, without good means of growing or even properly navigating the current customer base.
As we written about before, enterprise resource management (ERP) helps a number of different types of companies, such as professional services companies, get a better handle on their employees, reduce time spent on non-billable tasks. and improve utilization.
What, specifically, can ERP do for software companies, particularly those that develop SaaS or cloud-based applications?
Major growth is possible with ERP for software companies.
Works at any scale, and helps scale
Most software companies begin small—they might not be a startup, in the traditional sense, but they generally begin with just a few employees and grow from there. In fact, growth is actually a major issue for many software companies—the growing pains that come with trying to expand from a half-dozen employees to 50 within a year can break even the best managers and hiring committees.
ERP systems are built to help manage the back office systems that deal with rapid growth. Without these, too many companies find themselves simply enable to manage the hundreds of concurrent processes.
The even better news is that a solid ERP system like NetSuite will scale alongside your business as it grows. You can go from a startup to getting ready for your IPO, all on the same product. You can make decisions faster because of the solid accounting core, improve overall visibility, and streamline your internal processes to ensure that you’re moving fast and saving money.
Build efficient processes
Speaking of streamlining—the more a software company grows, the more it needs to handle a wide variety of disparate business processes. ERP for software companies will help simplify revenue recognition, subscription-based revenue streams, forecasting, and much more. You can ditch spreadsheets and immediately build out new processes that will be able to expand alongside the business as it grows.
The goal is to eliminate any manual, error-prone processes. Updating spreadsheets by hand, for example, or trying to reconcile disparate information, can cause issues that could, for example, force the financial department to completely re-calculate the next quarterly forecast. And without being able to visualize those numbers immediately, you can’t react in moments of crisis.
ERP gives software companies the ability to immediately dashboard and visualize where their finances stand, all without time-consuming efforts, to make smarter decisions.
Take ctrl (get it?!) with ERP for software companies.
Get ready for the future
Even if your company’s product isn’t in the cloud, you understand that most people want to have access to their information from wherever they are, whether that’s at home or on the road. By investing in a cloud ERP solution straightaway, you enable all the flexibility, mobility, and agility that new people want and companies need. All of NetSuite’s applications are optimized for mobile access, which means your people can get exactly the numbers they need during a sales visit, for example.
Having good accounting systems is important, but so is looking ahead. Last quarter’s financial data might be useful for some minor course corrections, but software companies need more to truly understand what’s to come so that they can react. Real-time data insights helps make those decisions happen.
ERP for software companies: where to go next
Bi101 specializes in helping software companies enable new levels of insight and innovation through ERP. We partner with NetSuite to provide a comprehensive, mobile-enabled, and real-time suite of tools to help manage accounting and discover what’s to come. We even offer a 14-day free trial to get you on the road to ERP-enabled growth.
What do you think? Are you here to grow and take control? Get in touch to get started.
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