5 Tips for Picking the Best ERP Finance and Accounting Solution

It’s a little more challenging for small to medium sized companies to find the best fitting Finance and Accounting ERP software, but these 5 Tips should help you with your effort. There is a lot of competition amongst ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) vendors for mid market companies. Historically bypassed by the ERP giants such as Oracle, SAP and now Microsoft Dynamics, small to mid sized companies are now on the radar screen of these “big” ERP solutions, and that is stirring up the pot. This competition is working to the advantage of the ERP practitioners of smaller sized companies looking for a solution to fit their organization. The first thing to do is name drop these “big” system names to the ERP vendors you are talking with and let them know that you are looking at their systems and know what features and services their solutions offer. This means that you should get a more robust set of features and mores customized solutions from your list of suitors. Secondly, because of the competitive environment amongst ERP vendors, don’t settle for a lesser version of the software even if you decide on going with one of the ERP system giants. In the past you may have settled for a dumbed-down, less customized version of the software, you no longer need to lower your expectations. Because you are a midsized company, you don’t have the big pocket books of Fortune 500 organizations. So make sure that your solution can be deployed and up running in a timely fashion. You don’t have the capital or resources to afford a lengthy implementation that drag on for months or even years. You may want to consider SaaS, software as a service, accounting and finance solutions if ease of deployment and capital costs are of a paramount concern to you. Be open minded about open source solutions. Not only are they becoming more popular because of their capital requirements and ease of implementation, they are incredibly powerful solutions and are a serious competitor to the more traditional on-premise software solutions. Lastly, you may want to group your accounting and finance ERP decisions with a CRM, customer relationship management solution in tandem to save costs and resources. It’s a good idea to know what your organization’s strategic plan is and kill two birds with one stone. Not only will implementing both systems at the same time save costs, you will most likely have enterprise solutions that have a more seamless fit than introducing a new enterprise system at a later date.