Technology has, obviously, changed our world and continues to make a profound impact on how we do business every day. For example, what once held small businesses back has been made possible with software and services now available through cloud computing. Although QuickBooks is available online, there are a number of other affordable deployment options now available bringing down the cost of more comprehensive business management solutions. 

Often the well-being of a business can surpass its ability to maintain that success. Success of the business, if not managed in the right way can lead to failure.

As your business grows, different problems and opportunities arise which demand different solutions - what worked a year ago might now be not the best approach. Managing growth is a vital part of nurturing a successful business. You will eventually add employees, suppliers and vendors, and a growing list of customers as your business matures. Steady growth and expanding operations into a new state, or even a new country, creates a new set of challenges that basic accounting software, simply can’t handle. If you are spending more time on redundant data entry, creating spreadsheets, and manually calculating varying sales taxes, then you are on a short road to data mishandling and mistakes.

For organizations to maximize throughput and gain operational competitiveness, it is imperative to have a sound demand planning process. Demand planning is a skill that relies on data collection and analysis. You need to know the issues, the drivers behind the issues, and the solutions for the best possible forecasting.

“It is critical that organizations develop the right demand planning process to improve effectiveness,” says Steven Steutermann, Research VP at Gartner. He further says "Organizations are struggling to find the process that fully utilizes the alignment of organization resources. The balance between bottom-up collaborative approaches versus top-down statistical modeling is challenging, and the ability to understand baseline volumes from promotional volumes — as well as mix and shift within portfolios — is an equally daunting task." collection and analysis. You need to know the issues, the drivers behind the issues, and the solutions for the best possible forecasting.

Decision-making is an essential part of good business. In order to make better decisions, you need to have access over good information. Therefore it is wise to check the books before you make any important business decisions.

Unfortunately, when using entry-level accounting software like QuickBooks, the answers don’t come as easily or quickly as the questions.  While you can draw financial data from QuickBooks, you still need details from procurement, manufacturing, and other departments to provide all of the information you need to move forward.  Constantly going back to the books and your managers means you are looking backward more often than forward.

An ERP software can be said to be well-configured when it places an emphasis on providing the right benefits without requiring too high of an investment. Today, with the help of a well-configured ERP software solution, organizations are effectively able to streamline and better manage a wide array of operational responsibilities.

Still, most ERP solutions in the market have some flaws in one way or another, such as flexibility issues, highly fragmented operations, and lack of operational visibility.