Introduction

What is an ERP system? And why should businesses use it?

If you are already convinced you need an all-in-one enterprise solutions system for your organization, you can skip this page.

Today, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) also face some of the problems that large enterprises do. One of them is planning and managing their resources. SMEs face similar complexities but have limited resources to deal with them.

Small businesses (like their bigger counterparts) have to:

Do accounts to track their sales/purchases.
Do their taxes.
Pay their employees.
Manage deliveries within promised timelines.
Deliver quality goods and services.
Communicate with customers, and answer their queries.

Large enterprises invest millions of dollars in highly sophisticated systems like SAP. SAP and similar systems can handle requirements from these large enterprises to bring their multi-country, multi-company, multi-currency, global businesses into a single platform. This has helped them consolidate data/records in the fundamental processes such as accounting, taxation, payroll, reporting, and supply chain, to name a few.

In contrast to large enterprises, SMEs have been left out of the 1st wave of digital revolution (1995-2015). The main reason for being left out is because they need the financial resources to license, hire programmers and customize such software to match their needs. Systems like SAP have been a no-go for most SMEs. Such systems need a minimum CAPEX or OPEX layout of $100k (Yes, One Hundred Thousand Dollars) and upwards. Even with cloud offerings (Software as a Service, SAAS) from such vendors, there is no easy Do It Yourself (DIY) people can feel confident about.

So even today, small businesses continue to need help to keep things organized. They often use a mix of applications and tools such as spreadsheets, accounting software, and web-based CRMs to manage their day-to-day record keeping. As a consequence, they have to access different systems to understand customers' master data, sales, cash flows, or profitability. The information exists in seperate silos. It becomes hard to combine the data to get valuable insights or alerts. This leads to SMEs being reactive instead of being proactive in their day-to-day operations. With such a constrained way of working, there's limited scope for growth.

ERPNext addresses some fundamental problems SMEs struggle with when managing their resources:

Affordability: It is a Free and Open Source Software, freely available to download and install.
Completeness: All necessary modules are available -view full list.
Customization: It is easy to add fields or add more features.
Efficiency: Computing requirements are relatively low (cheaper to host and manage).
Wholesomeness: A single system and database that allows multiple users to record transactions or extract data simultaneously.

What is ERPNext?

ERPNext is a full-featured business management solution that helps SMEs to record all their business transactions in a single system. With ERPNext, SMEs can make informed, fact-based, timely decisions to remain ahead of the competition. It serves as the backbone of a business adding strength, transparency, and control to your growing enterprise.

ERPNext will help you to:

Keep track of the financial indicators of the organisation.
Track all invoices and payments.
Know what quantity of which product is available in stock.
Identify and track your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Identify open customer queries.
Manage employee payroll.
Assign tasks and follow up on them.
Maintain a database of all your customers, suppliers, and contacts.
Prepare quotations.
Track your budgets and spending.
Determine effective selling price based on the actual raw material, machinery, and effort cost.
Get reminders on maintenance schedules.
Publish your website.

And a ton more.

Is ERPNext only for SMEs?

ERPNext scales well from SMEs to even large enterprises. ERPNext is used by several African retail chains, and a highly regarded equities trading company in India with over a thousand employees.

Check out a variety of User Stories to know more. Here is a video to get you started:

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