ERP Health Check: 5 Ways to Check Your Current System Performance
Your ERP software is the backbone at the center of your operations. You need to know it’s working as intended and getting the results you’re looking for. But how do you accomplish this? The answer is Key performance indicators (KPIs.)
KPIs give you valuable and unique insights into your company, and they can be used to help evaluate the performance of your ERP software as well. In this article, we’ll show you five critical KPIs you can use to perform a health check on your ERP and offer a few tips on finding others that can also help.
5 Ways to Check Your Current System Performance
Remember, KPIs are not just numbers you’re trying to reach and satisfy some arbitrary goal. Instead, they act as key indicators for success. You can measure the success and efficiency of your ERP implementation by looking at different KPIs to gauge how it's actively doing its job.
It’s easy to watch for changes in these metrics and make adjustments to capitalize on the information you have at hand. Let’s look at the 5 critical KPIs you can check to see if your ERP software is worth the trust you place in it.
1. Demand Forecasting
Once you have your ERP software deployed, demand forecast is an important metric that will help you determine whether your ERP is being productive. Proper ERP solutions should easily be able to use machine learning and AI technology to accurately predict future demand using previous data and trends.
If you find your current solution isn’t fitting the bill and the numbers are off more frequently than they are accurate, it might be time to try something new or upgrade.
2. Cycle Time
One of the most important metrics for manufacturers and distributors is cycle time. It’s a measure that tracks each product's lifespan from the moment an invoice is received until the item is delivered to the customer. It’s essentially telling you how fast you are responding to sales.
Your ERP software should be tracking this and helping you uncover those areas where you can improve. If it is not, it might be time to look for a better partner and solution.
3. Customers Satisfaction
The end consumer is also affected by your ERP solution. So it makes sense that customer satisfaction is another critical metric to keep an eye on when evaluating your ERP software.
Does your ERP software make the process smoother and more efficient for the end-user? Is it giving the customer accurate information regarding things like delivery times and the number of products in stock? Does it facilitate easy refunds and returns?
All of these factors and more play into customer satisfaction, making overall customer satisfaction a great KPI to use for ERP health checks.
4. Employees Confidence
Another area to check is how your ERP solution affects your labor force. Are employees able to complete more tasks in less time without hassle? Are managers able to easily and effectively distribute labor and resources?
If people are constantly having problems with your software or it is making things more difficult, continuing to rely on it can lower overall employee morale and productivity. Both of these effects will have negative impacts on the company as a whole.
5. Schedule Adherence
Schedule adherence is another useful metric for gauging the health of your ERP application. Of course, nothing is perfect, and there will be things that cause unforeseen delays.
However, a good ERP solution will be better at bringing the estimated number of delays and the actual number of delays more in line with each other. The goal is to have a production schedule you can maintain for maximum efficiency.
Get an ERP Health Check Today
It is critical to evaluate if your current ERP is meeting the needs of your business. In addition to the items above, I’d like to offer some critical questions we ask our customers:
- Do you rely on spreadsheets to get things done?
- Does your current system lack functionality, is hard to use, or is not integration friendly?
- Are your operating costs are too high?
- Are you unable to meet or exceed competitors’ customer service benchmarks because of system limitations or inflexibility
- Do competitors routinely outperform on cost/price, quality, lead time, and/or service?
- Is your system is unable to support the growth and change required by your business?
- Do you need better visibility and control?
- Do executives get little useful insight from the system (lack of dashboards, self-service BI – or they are difficult to use)?
- Do you have difficulty complying with requirements from regulators, creditors, or board members
If you answered yes to 1 or more of these questions, you should explore the advantages of investing in a modern, cloud ERP system like Acumatica.
Get started by scheduling your free ERP Health Check. Click here to pick a date and time. We have just a few spots left.
