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Leaders of the most successful fast-growing small to midsized companies understand that as their company grows, their daily operations and processes must adapt to the new size of their organization. Too often executives of growing companies run their business with the same systems and practices as they did when they were small, newly formed organizations. They tend to find themselves hitting a breaking point as daily operations become much more difficult than they used to be – quality suffers and customers become unsatisfied.
Often these executives are so busy leading their companies into new markets that they do not feel they have the time to step back and evaluate their current processes or ensure they have the right technology in place to support them long-term. In light of the recently published “Fastest Growing Private Companies in Orange County” list in the Orange County Business Journal, Vision33 has put together a list of common symptoms to help executives quickly recognize when their company is out-complexing their current practices and processes. Symptoms of growing pains include:
Loss of key customers to competitors
Symptom: Fast growing companies need to have deep insight into their customers so that they can provide the most value to them. With small business CRM packages, they do not have the correct tools to understand their customer’s buying patterns and proactively meet their long term needs.
Solution: By leveraging an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, companies can pull accurate, real-time data about their customers so that they can better anticipate their customers’ needs and wants. They can use this customer insight to regularly schedule check-in calls, anticipate when customers will need to place a new order, and even track service calls to ensure prompt response time. With quick reports, business owners don’t need to ‘gut check’ who their best customers are. They can quickly see and provide them with special discounts or other incentives to recognize the value of the relationship.
Stay tuned for Part 2 to learn how to recognize when your company has out-complexed its current inventory management system. For real life examples of how the right technology has helped Vision33 customers overcome the symptoms of their growing pains, access the Vision33 Beginner's Guide to ERP.
For fast-growing businesses, the time to shift from small business accounting software (e.g. QuickBooks) to an ERP platform may already be upon you. But how do you know for sure and where do you begin sorting through your options?
These are challenging and often complicated questions to answer, and in most cases, the available resources online don’t clarify anything. For that reason, we consolidated all our early stage ERP resources in one place.
