Infassure’s Accounting Systems & Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) practice works with small and medium-sized organizations to move from their outdated or inadequate accounting software to Microsoft Dynamics™. Microsoft Dynamics™ includes integrated, adaptable business management solutions that automate and streamline financial processes in a way that helps you drive business success. These solutions are easy to use and easily accessed by your people so your business can thrive.

In order to understand the value of an integrated Accounting & ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics to your organization, following are the 5 major reasons to undertake an implementation.

1. Integrate financial information—As the CEO tries to understand the company’s overall performance, he may find many different versions of the truth. Finance has its own set of revenue numbers, sales has another version, and the different business units may each have their own version of how much they contributed to revenues. ERP creates a single version of the truth that cannot be questioned because everyone is using the same system.
2. Integrate customer order information—ERP systems can become the place where the customer order lives from the time a customer service representative receives it until the loading dock ships the merchandise and finance sends an invoice. By having this information in one software system, rather than scattered among many different systems that can’t communicate with one another, companies can keep track of orders more easily, and coordinate manufacturing, inventory and shipping among many different locations at the same time.
3. Standardize and speed up manufacturing processes—Manufacturing companies—especially those with an appetite for mergers and acquisitions—often find that multiple business units across the company make the same widget using different methods and computer systems. ERP systems come with standard methods for automating some of the steps of a manufacturing process. Standardizing those processes and using a single, integrated computer system can save time, increase productivity and reduce head count.
4. Reduce inventory—ERP helps the manufacturing process flow more smoothly, and it improves visibility of the order fulfillment process inside the company. That can lead to reduced inventories of the stuff used to make products (work-in-progress inventory), and it can help users better plan deliveries to customers, reducing the finished good inventory at the warehouses and shipping docks. To really improve the flow of your supply chain, you need supply chain software, but ERP helps too.
5. Standardize HR information—Especially in companies with multiple business units, HR may not have a unified, simple method for tracking employees’ time and communicating with them about benefits and services. ERP can fix that.

In order to successfully implement ERP on-time and on-budget, organizations must be aware of the following key considerations when building a project budget.

• Training—Training is the near-unanimous choice of experienced ERP implementers as the most underestimated budget item. Training expenses are high because workers almost invariably have to learn a new set of processes, not just a new software interface.
• Integration and testing—Testing the links between ERP packages and other corporate software links that have to be built on a case-by-case basis is another often-underestimated cost.
• Customization—This happens when the ERP software can’t handle one of your business requirements.
• Data conversion—Most CIO’s require corporate information, such as customer and supplier records, product design data and the like, to be moved from old systems to new ERP homes.
• Data analysis—Often, the data from the ERP system must be combined with data from external systems for analysis purposes.
• Consultants—Companies should identify objectives for which its consulting partners must aim when training internal staff.
• Waiting for ROI—Most of the systems don’t reveal their value until after companies have had them running for some time and can concentrate on making improvements in the business processes that are affected by the system.