Over the years, small to mid-sized businesses have weaved a tapestry of applications to run their operation. From accounting to order fulfillment, to sales and marketing, an entangled cluster of applications exists across millions of small to mid-sized business. This kind of shoddy infrastructure will not enable rapidly growing businesses to continue growth.

Using numerous applications to run your business is inefficient. This approach lacks many of the capabilities that growing businesses need. When businesses are using this strategy and “hit the hockey stick”, they end up adding even more applications that may not integrate with previously implemented applications. This cluster of applications is inundated with unneeded manual labor, bottlenecks and increased risk. Unfortunately, this type of internal process can actually result in a once very prosperous business backsliding.

So how do I get out of this application cluster I’ve created so my business can continue to grow?

We’re glad you asked! 

NetSuite has worked with growing business spanning numerous industries and geographies, and with thousands of finance and IT professionals guiding their companies through different phases of development. While these businesses are all very different, they experience similar a commonality in frustrations with their on-premise systems.

So, is it time to make the switch to a cloud-based solution?

If you have a growing business and are concerned that the headaches and complexity imposed by an application cluster is limiting your business, you are not alone!

Check out these symptoms below that may mean it’s time for a much needed change.

  • It’s difficult to find out what’s really happening across the business in real-time. Most legacy systems were designed when fax machines were relevant, and companies could wait until the end of the month to get the data they need. That’s not the case today.  Consolidated views and real-time reporting are imperative. If your employees are playing “find the spreadsheet”, your reports are outdated and take too long to run, and you find it nearly impossible to create a comprehensive report of your company, it may be time to reconsider your cluster.

 

  • Manual processes are used to entering and reconciling data across systems. In today’s “need it now” world, it is frustrating for suppliers, customers and business managers to wait for answers while information is manually transferred between systems. Incompatibilities between systems and convoluted integration have left employees copying data between systems. If your sales orders are still paper-based, your approval process is slow, and sales forecasting and budgeting is more guesswork than based on facts, it may be time to reconsider your cluster.

 

  • More accounting is done outside of the financial system than in it. Standalone financial systems are designed to automate a limited set of core accounting functions. As businesses grow, companies must adapt their accounting processes to fit this hardwired application, rather than having a system that is scalable and will accommodate growth. Standalone financial systems simply can’t handle stronger financial controls or support for more complex financial processes. If your financial team has to use several applications to do their job, it’s too difficult to add new sales channels and real-time adaption is essentially impossible, it may be time to reconsider your cluster.

 

  • The business spends too much time worrying about technology instead of focusing on business results. Every time a company adds a new layer of business software, the underlying systems infrastructure becomes more complicated and inflexible. Earlier investments in hardware and software are costly to maintain and fail to keep pace with technological innovation. If you’re stuck in the maintenance cycle, it may be time to reconsider your cluster.

 

Sound like your business? Seems like you’re ready for a change! So, what can you do?

Consider a NetSuite partner! NetSuite is a unified, true-cloud solution for growing businesses. With NetSuite, there are no more costly updates, time-consuming manual data entry and real-time data lags to slow down your business growth. In this transition from cluster to collective, it is extremely helpful to find a NetSuite partner who can help migrate data from your application cluster and perform checks and balances before your system goes live. This approach will ensure that the transition to a new system is consistent with business processes and objectives.

At InnoVergent, we are industry experts in cloud-based accounting and financial software solutions. We help you know where your business has been and where it’s going. Each member of our team commits every single day to help you thrive and succeed. We take time to get to know your company, so we know which route is right for you.

If your growing company is experiencing any of the symptoms above, your standalone financial application may be limiting your business growth. Moving your company to NetSuite allows for more efficient and effective business operations—essential for growing an organization and enabling employees to react to client and organizational needs in real-time.

This post was created in conjunction with materials from Oracle | NetSuite.