About this Tribe
Can a blog about small business ERP change the world? Probably not, but a Tribe can. Here’s how – a 12 minute video on how a Tribe can make a change.
This blog is dedicated to making a change in the fortunes of small businesses everywhere. This blog is just one instrument in a handful of on and offline activities to create and grow a tribe who collectively can make a change to the fortunes of small businesses everywhere.
Owners, buyers, users, consultants, analysts, vendors and bystanders you are all welcome to join this small business ERP tribe. Read, question, debate, answer, advise, argue, promote and criticise. There a few rules here apart from courtesy and respect.
Whatever you do here focus on the tribal cause and make it constructive. Contributors will always be warmly welcomed – just get in touch here
Thanks for stopping by and do come back again soon
OK enough said – here’s the background on the cause…
Unfair advantage
All small businesses should have the opportunity to use ERP. For as long as I can remember this type of system has been the privilege of corporate and large businesses with substantial budgets. These companies have recognized that ‘one system’ makes complete sense and enables them to more effectively manage their operations through complete and comprehensive views of their business.
ERP vendors such as SAP, Oracle (PeopleSoft & JD Edwards), NetSuite and Microsoft (Dynamics) charge immense license and implementations fees well beyond the financial reach of the majority of small businesses. Small businesses with small budgets have been largely ignored and continue to be ‘force fed’ low cost point solutions for key functions such as accounting and customer relationship management instead of affordable small business ERP.
The small business tragedy
In the US and Europe a massive 55% of small businesses do not survive beyond five years. Many of us have seen it happen over and over again – it’s painful for the people employed, the families who supported the dream and the unfortunate suppliers and customers. Small businesses failures are like trees falling in the forest. The world ignores them and the tragedy only affects a few creatures around them. Whereas in the corporate world the sound of a major name crashing can be heard around the world, the consequences are far reaching and often devastate entire towns or even regions. If the failure rate of corporations was as high as small businesses we would hear about it daily and the fact is we don’t.
A possible cure
I am in no way suggesting that ERP is the cure for business failure, but these systems can help prevent it. When most individuals start a small business the chances are they know most things about making their product or delivering their service but very little about the subtle art and sciences of good business management. Without comprehensive systems to track and measure end to end processes such as Lead to Cash they cannot possibly perform accurate analysis or ever hope to practice the art of improvement through measurement.
No, ERP alone isn’t the answer, small businesses need education to not only inspire the adoption of sound business processes but to enable them to obtain value from the information about the events within and across processes that can be realized through an ERP system.
Good business processes help foster improvement, progress and prosperity, but without up to date and comprehensive information as provided by ERP the road to success is scattered with missed opportunities, less predictable and difficult to navigate. The good news is the Cloud Computing, SaaS, on demand circus has spawned a tiny tribe of vendors who have this problem in their gun sights and every day new vendors such as Salesorder.com are filling this gap in the market with easy to use and deploy affordable solutions.
