“What is the best ERP for a small business?” is the wrong question. The right question is: which ERP is right for your company, with your processes, your volume and the way you work? A system that works wonderfully for one company can be a waste of time and money for another, even if both are small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) in the same industry.
This article won’t tell you “the best ERP is X.” It will give you the criteria so you can answer that question yourself, with real information about your own company.
What is the best ERP for small business?
Short answer: the best ERP for a small business is the one that fits its real processes, connects with the systems it already uses and has a total cost it can sustain over time. No single product wins in every case: it depends on how each company works.
An ERP (enterprise resource planning system) organizes and connects the core areas of your business: sales, purchasing, inventory, finance and, depending on the case, production. But every company combines those areas differently, with its own rules, exceptions and a way of working built up over time. A “generic” ERP that doesn’t account for those specifics forces your company to adapt to the software, instead of the software adapting to your company. That is where ERP projects start to fail, or end up only half used.
The 6 criteria that define the right ERP for your SMB
1. Fit with your real processes
Can the system be configured to reflect how your company actually works, or will you have to bend your processes to fit the system?
2. Scalability
Can it handle the number of users, transactions and data you will have in two or three years, or will you have to migrate again soon?
3. Integration with what you already use
Does it connect with your other platforms (sales, invoicing, e-commerce, payroll), or will it add one more isolated system to your collection of systems that don’t talk to each other? If that is your situation, it’s worth reading up first on how to approach systems integration.
4. Total cost (not just the license)
License or initial development, implementation, training, support and maintenance over the years: the real cost of an ERP is the sum of all of that, not just the number on the initial quote.
5. Support and continuity
Who answers when something breaks or when you need a change? Does it depend on a single person, on a large vendor for whom you are just another customer, or on a team that knows your company?
6. Implementation time
How much real time will your company spend in transition, with the old and the new system running in parallel?
Off-the-shelf ERP vs. custom ERP: strengths and limits of each path
An off-the-shelf ERP (a ready-made product on the market) has the advantage of being proven and faster to implement for conventional processes. Its limit shows up when your company has its own rules, exceptions or workflows: then the standard system forces you to choose between adapting to it yourself and paying for customizations that sometimes end up costing more than starting from scratch.
A custom ERP is built (or configured on a flexible foundation) to reflect exactly how your company works. It takes more thought at the start, but it avoids the friction of “teaching the system” what your company already knows how to do. It is the path that makes sense when your processes are part of your competitive advantage and you don’t want to standardize them to fit someone else’s mold.
How to tell whether a custom ERP is right for you
A custom ERP (or a deep adaptation on a flexible foundation) is probably right for you if:
- You already tried an off-the-shelf system and ended up tracking in Excel whatever the system didn’t cover.
- The way you operate is part of what sets you apart from the competition, and you don’t want to lose it to fit generic software.
- You need the ERP to connect with other in-house or third-party systems that a closed product can’t easily integrate with.
- Your company is growing fast and you need a system that grows with it, not one you’ll have to migrate again in two years.
How we implement a custom ERP at DCisGlobal
At DCisGlobal we design and implement custom ERPs starting from how your company really works, not from a predefined module. We begin by understanding your current processes, identify what needs to be automated and what needs to be connected to other systems, and build (or configure on a solid foundation) the system your company needs for the coming years, not just for today.
