Shedding The ERP Dilemma

Many small and medium businesses consider themselves as ‘too small’ for ERP. But the mindset has changed with the availability of affordable Cloud ERP solutions and the benefits they offer

- Soma Tah

The vibrant and diverse business community of over 50 million small and medium businesses (SMBs) has emerged as the most dynamic engine of India’s growth story. Being a major source of industrialization, innovation, and employment generation, these SMBs contribute around 6.11 per cent of the manufacturing GDP and 24.63 per cent of the Service sector GDP of the country at present and hence, are considered a key driver of the Indian economy as well.

Despite a limited access to credit and IT expertise, the sector is evolving fast with the availability of affordable and hassle-free SaaS tools. One such tool is the Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) solution which is largely used by enterprises for their business needs, but have become popular with SMBs also in recent years. ERP integrates and manages a company’s financials, procurement, supply chain, operations, human resource into a single system, thus removes the information silos between departments to give everyone a single pane of glass view.

Small businesses, usually manage business functions separately which often causes data errors, duplication of functions or records. An ERP solution may seem unnecessary at the initial stage of their journey, but as the businesses grow, manual business processes become much more tedious, time-consuming and difficult to manage. The basic and freemium products also make it difficult for them to scale further.