If you are planning to expand your business, say opening a new branch or adding more crew in your current shop, it is always a better option of undergoing serious planning. Most businesses can survive using logbooks, excel sheets and record forms. The thing is that this is still happening today despite of the fact that the business world is getting into height of many technological innovations. It is culture that hinders people in using new technological methods, specifically the computing tools for business. As a business owner in these modern days, you have to as well accept the fact that winning the market is investing on marketing tools that are current and are certainly useful.

Enterprise Resource Planning is what we mean here by serious planning. In huge companies, ERP planning is an eight to twenty stages. Of all these stages, software selection is one of the key drivers under the first three to five stages in order to proceed with the higher stages. Today, ERP software are scattered everywhere. On-premise and cloud-based software are always on top of the ERP category selection process. Cost, features, ease of utilization and speed of implementation are among of the major topics that need to be discussed about by you and your business partners. This conversation between you and your partners will often lead into the common understanding about the Total Cost of Ownership or TCO. It will take time and your budget is always a big factor consider.

Integration is a process of adapting and configuring your current business setup with the ERP software that you want to use in your business expansion. What we mean by adapting is shaping your company culture with respect to the technology that you will use or adapt. If you happened to live for more than five or ten years using an excel spreadsheet, it can become a culture shock to your company of suddenly eliminating the use of it and changing it with a database. Not only you will think about too much consuming of time but your closest and best employees will mind about difficulty in training in the use of the software. Software configuration is a technical process. If you have backgrounds on IT and programming, you can save time and money by not hiring any expert on these fields. But if not, you might have no other choice but to hire at least one. A well-configured ERP software will run your business free of bugs and less prone to virus attacks. If this will be your business setup, expect a year up to five free of worries from data corruption and hacking. You and your customers will be happy. Cash flows are well recorded. Your employees have no complains about their salary.

A coffee shop needs to have an inventory database of sugar, coffee, cups, flavorings and bottles of water. Everything should be accounted, no more, no less. A hundred cups is way different from a thousand cups. And with this given situation, an ERP software must be selected and integrated into your business setup. Face the fact that experts are the key people that will help you.