The real challenge to taking your business into the next century are the things that you haven’t even considered as data yet. Consider a company that captures data about their customers. From a marketing perspective you like to know where they came from, from a sales perspective you like to know how much they’ve bought on the year, credit- aging, receivables-orders, shipping-location.
But do you know when they’re ready to buy more products? Do you know if they’re subscribed to that magazine that you’ve been spending thousands on? Too creepy? How about being able to run a report that orders customers by the size of their company or annual revenue? How about generating a cost analysis of production errors by employee?
In the past, measuring metrics like production errors were only appropriate for large manufacturers with heavy-handed operational guidelines. It would cost too much to implement for the smaller businesses. In 2017, Duke University developed “smart wheels” a technology that measures wear and tear of tires. While this may seem overkill, but when you consider the cost of replacing tires and the savings a company can realize by either avoiding blown tires or replacing them too soon you can see why the technology has been pursued. Keeping an eye on pioneering activities like this can help you reap the rewards when they become cost effective for your industry.
Reading the data is one step, saving the data in a useful way is another. The systems of yesteryear are great for performing the day-to-day functions you need to succeed, but younger companies are get the benefit of those competitive advantages built into their software from day one. If you’re feeling behind, it’s likely that the vehicle (software) you use is holding you back. While supporting Team Horner’s journey to change their software, we found a great guide called ERPFocus. They gave the following 5 signs your software needs changing:
- You aren’t mobile
- You don’t integrate easily with others
- The vendor isn’t keeping up with your needs
- The vendor isn’t keeping up with the industry
- You’re needing functions that aren’t ‘standard’.
If you want to run with the big dogs, you need a software that can not only keep your digital information, but track and capture more than you’ve done in the past.
