4 signs that your ERP software needs to be upgraded

Post By Charlie Heywood on February 3, 2016

4 signs that your ERP software needs to be upgraded

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If you feel that your business is struggling to achieve the desired results, it could be that your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is becoming overloaded.

Whether you’re a small business or large enterprise, the best ERP system should be able to take the strain of your success—and not wilt with every new client or change in business direction. Yet many older, more traditional ERP systems were never built to be that flexible and could now be hampering more than helping your business.

Here are four signs that suggest you need to think about implementing new ERP software asap:

1. Your system is slow and crashes frequently

If you’ve already ruled out server/environment or network overload, then crashing and slow response times are very good indicators your ERP software is under strain. Check any patterns you can find, such as whether these problems occur at specific times/days/weeks/months. If so, reschedule to create a more balanced workload.

If not, then the problem is most likely that your system simply hasn’t been designed to deal with this amount of pressure. In which case, it’s time to consider finding a more robust ERP solution that—properly implemented and supported—will be able to cope with your increasing business demands.

2. Your system doesn’t support the number of users you need

This is a typical issue for successful companies. The bigger your business wins, the more rapidly you’ll expand—and the quicker you’ll outgrow your old ERP system.

A lot of these systems were specifically built for a maximum number of people. Exceed this and you introduce the frustration of users have to wait to log in. For more modern Software as a Service (SaaS) systems, it might be possible to simply increase the total number of seats, but for other on-premises systems this will probably require some kind of upgrade—which could be both expensive and a major hassle. It will also lock you into a system that is clearly not as flexible as you need, which will undoubtedly lead to more issues in future.

3. You are already using spreadsheets and other ‘work-arounds’ to do what your ERP system can’t

This is a fairly obvious one. Of course, this symptom could be to do with lack of user training, but that really should have been taken care of by your vendor during the implementation phase. So if you discover your team using other (more manual) processes to get work done, it’s most likely a cause of your ERP system’s inability to cope with the workload.

It could be stemming from problems we’ve covered in #1, with slow response times or frequent system crashes. Or it could be that processes have changed and your ERP software simply wasn’t designed to accommodate those changes. Either way, it’s making life harder on your staff and doubling the work, as well as leading to the dissemination of work ‘off-grid’—all of which is the exact opposite of what your ERP was supposed to do.

4. You know you’re exceeding the maximum load for certain procedures

Some ERP systems are only optimised for certain numbers of different transactions. So if you’re already exceeding this figure, it’s no great leap to suggest that you’re overloading the system and are ready for an upgrade. This can be critical for retailers or others who carry large amounts of stock because this is a typical overload. Another is for certain financial transactions—for example, if you process a certain number of invoices or deal with large numbers of small suppliers, this can cause difficulties for some older systems. Finding a new ERP system that can cope with the large amounts of data you deal with is now vital to the future of your business.

While the replacement cycles for ERP systems is generally every 10 years, you don’t want to wait if you’re experiencing these problems now. Get a free consultation with us to discover how one of the best ERP systems on the market can maximise your business potential both now and in the future.