Other systems making strides are Microsoft Dynamics, Workday and MYOB Advanced for which Baker Tilly Staples Rodway Taranaki is a Business Partner.
One of the questions we often receive is “when should a business look to upgrade to an ERP?”. I asked ERP Sales Manager Lisa Nicks from Fusion 5 (www.fusion5.co.nz) who specialises in helping companies move and grow into the right sized ERP solution: “You should look to move to an ERP solution when you have too many systems that you have had to stitch together to run your complete operations. This might include your core Financial Management or ERP solution, something else for Inventory Management, other software to manage your demand planning and replenishment or manufacturing, something to manage CRM and customer engagement and yet again some other piece of software for Marketing and your ECommerce platform.
Companies also need to get a more experienced ERP solution when they grow into multi-company, multi-currency and multi-country and may need various national language support and have the need to manage company consolidation.
“Transaction volume can also dictate when it is time to grow into a new ERP, as the smaller solutions can have volume thresholds so when you need to process 10,000 orders a month or have 100’s of lines of SKUs it is often time to upgrade.”
Automation and AI
In our view we are going to see automation becoming more democratised, that is, being available to the masses, not solely in the domain of large organisations. It will provide businesses with real opportunities to gain efficiencies and cut costs.
Whilst many accounting platforms can already largely automate transaction coding and reporting, customer order receipts, delivery of goods, re order of inventory, etc, it is going to be Artificial Intelligence (AI) which allows the automation to be adjusted and accommodate nuances or irregularities so that the automation “learns” and is effective in all cases. An example of this is taking stock levels of a similar item into consideration when reordering a product that has higher sales than normal. As well as efficiencies this will deliver greater insights and connections with customers as it pulls on and makes sense of enormous amounts of third-party data.
Accounting platforms which have their data in the cloud will be the ones better positioned to take advantage of the automation and AI toolsets.
Summary
So that completes a round-up of the cloud accounting market in New Zealand, what we see happening and possible impacts on NZ businesses small and not so small.
It is clear things will continue to change at pace. Some change will be welcomed, while other change, for example, a move from MYOB AccountRight Classic, may be forced on you. As always, in times of change it is important you take the time to take stock, talk to your advisers and react strategically.
If you wish to discuss the changing face of accounting technology, please contact your usual Baker Tilly Staples Rodway advisor.
DISCLAIMER No liability is assumed by Baker Tilly Staples Rodway for any losses suffered by any person relying directly or indirectly upon any article within this website. It is recommended that you consult your advisor before acting on this information.
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