Dinah McNav, the ERP Agony Aunt, answers the problems and pressures faced by businesses everywhere. This distress call comes from a manufacturer who saw cracks appearing in their accounting system. Luckily, Dinah knows just how to keep them afloat!

This is an SOS call to Dinah McNav.

Having seen the case study about a manufacturer within the global marine industry seeing results from changing their accounting software, we’ve discovered that we’re in a very similar position. We have been using a simple accounting system, Quickbooks, since we started out, which seemed fine back then. We saw some cracks start to appear a while ago and thought we could smooth them over by using spreadsheets to fill in the gaps but we are finding this a bigger strain and I’m concerned that we’re slowly going under and on the verge of sinking without a trace!

At the moment our systems are maxed out, reporting is slow and when it’s all hands on deck and people are trying to access critical information, the system locks. We are missing deadlines, losing orders to competitors, and I am afraid that one more big transaction is going to send us to the business equivalent of Davey Jones’ Locker.

We need something that’s going to steady the ship and won’t be satisfied with any old port in a storm. We need the right solution that can support us on our long journey.

Please help.

Regards, Mr A. Hab

Dear A. Hab

You seem to be in quite a state if you don’t mind me saying. But fear not, you are not up the creak without a paddle just yet.

As with any entry level solution you will inevitably experience limitations when you start to grow. Reporting becomes a long drawn out task that should take you half the time, user frustrations increase due to regular system crashes, and potential loss of data threatens to compromise the integrity of your data. All this is adding to the instability of the business and making it seem like you’re sailing on rocky waters.

The reasons why Quickbooks and Sage (Other entry level accounting solutions are available) fail in supporting growing businesses, and leave you all at sea, is their inability to handle things like; 

• An increased amount of transactions, customers and suppliers
• A change to your operational structure, adding new processes and procedures, e.g. manufacturing
• The addition of new office locations
• An increase in the number of system users
• Remote access or cloud deployment

What you need is an ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics NAV. It offers small and medium sized businesses like yours the complete control of all your core functions and processes, while giving you the information you need to make the right business decisions.

It doesn’t matter how many transactions you produce daily or if you add new operations, new locations or increase the user count, it doesn’t even matter if you change your choice of deployment, Microsoft Dynamics NAV will allow you to grow. After that, it should all be plain sailing.

If you’re feeling all at sea about your accounting system, and you need to speak with someone about NAV for your business, get in touch with ERP Central.

Wishing you fair winds and flat seas,

Dinah McNav

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