As a CFO, your role has never been more strategic - or more complex. When a company is poised for growth, the pressure to streamline operations, maintain financial oversight, and improve forecasting accuracy intensifies. Without the right systems in place, that pressure can become a roadblock to progress.
If your organisation falls into the £5M-£100M revenue bracket and operates in manufacturing or wholesale and distribution, chances are you’re experiencing - or soon will experience - some of the following ERP-related challenges. But with the right solution, every challenge is also an opportunity.
1. Fragmented Systems and No Single Version of the Truth
Many growing businesses still rely on numerous disparate systems with siloed applications that can’t communicate with each other. This fragmentation makes it very difficult to generate reliable reports and inconsistent data leads to an overall lack of confidence in business intelligence. This is where businesses can benefit from a fully integrated ERP solution, such as SAP Business One, which will provide a single source of truth across the entire organisation.
Hawthorn Trading implemented SAP Business One to provide the insight they needed to keep better control of their cashflow, automate manual processes and support strategic decision making. It has given them the transparency to see what is going on in every part of the business and supported them to capitalise on new opportunities and diversification into new markets from the insights it has provided.
2. Inaccurate Budgeting and Forecasting
Budgeting requires timely and reliable data, without which it becomes guesswork, and forecasting lacks the precision needed to respond quickly to market changes. Every business needs to be able to accurately budget and forecast to avoid cashflow problems. SAP Business One helps CFOs by providing real-time, accurate and intuitive reports, which enable them to build more accurate financial models that improve agility and strategic planning.
Since implementing SAP Business One, Hawthorn Trading has gained much greater insight into their cashflow, which has enabled them to make savings on consumables by negotiating contracts with suppliers to guarantee supply and get better prices. They saved £13,000 in the first quarter just by switching supplier.
3. Growth Plans Outpacing Operational Capacity
Business growth is often constrained by outdated systems that don’t provide the functionality they need to help them scale. Companies end up relying on multiple disparate systems to support them in specific areas, but these systems can’t communicate with each other, so repetitive manual processes become common as they duplicate effort between systems and Excel is used to plug the gaps. This creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies grow as the business growth is stalled.
SAP Business One is designed to help ambitious SMEs to scale by automating critical processes and providing them with the detailed insight they need to support their strategic decisions and future growth plans.
4. Limited Financial Visibility
CFOs need centralised financial data to give them a clear view of cash flow, profitability and overall financial health. Without a comprehensive ERP solution, such as SAP Business One, it’s very difficult for them to collate the information they need to support the growth of the business. SAP Business One gives end-to-end visibility into every aspect of the business’s financial situation, helping CFOs manage working capital more effectively and make proactive financial decisions.
5. Poor Integration Across Departments
Poor integration across departments causes big but unnecessary issues within businesses. Collaboration suffers when departments operate in isolation, and this is often caused when departments use disparate systems that don’t communication with each other. Finance needs visibility into sales pipelines, procurement and inventory need to be aligned with production, and customer service departments need access to information that improves customer satisfaction.
One of the biggest advantages of SAP Business One is its ability to unite all departments within one comprehensive ERP solution. It enables the sharing of information across the business, removing barriers to communication and streamlining processes that ultimately result in increased efficiency and happier customers.
6. Manual Reporting Consumes Valuable Time
Businesses that rely on outdated legacy systems often waste many hours compiling and reconciling reports. This is time that could be better spent on analysis and strategic tasks, but instead is spent producing reports, checking and double-checking to make sure that data is accurate, and waiting for reports to generate.
Another significant advantage of SAP Business One is its ability to generate timely and accurate reports at the touch of a button. Integrating this data in one system, instead of multiple disconnected databases or spreadsheets, eliminates duplicate data entry, costs, and related errors. SAP Business One gives clear visibility into how the business is performing, and greater confidence in the information used to make decisions, allowing you to effectively manage your business by exception.
One of Ascarii’s customers, For Media, has realised substantial time savings in report creation since implementing SAP Business One - where it used to take them days to create reports, with lots of manual intervention to compile data from difference sources, SAP Business One creates them in minutes.
7. Compliance and Audit Challenges
Meeting regulatory and audit requirements becomes increasingly complex as businesses grow, especially without centralised controls and documentation. Disparate legacy systems further complicate this as siloed information means that businesses don’t have ‘one single version of truth’ that they need to meet their reporting obligations.
With its pedigree from one of the world’s leading business software companies, SAP Business One was developed to comply with global compliance requirements. With multi-lingual and multi-jurisdictional functionality built in as standard, SAP Business One is perfectly positioned to support both local and global business growth. Companies can rest assured that they have the tools within their ERP solution to meet their compliance requirements.
8. Outdated User Interfaces Reduce Productivity
Employees often get frustrated with outdated software systems that are clunky and inefficient to use. Their inefficiency and unintuitive nature discourages user adoption and leads to people, when they can, trying to find workarounds outside of the system that was originally purchased to streamline business data and automate processes.
If businesses have been clinging on to outdated software solutions for several years, it is highly likely that there are more intuitive and flexible solutions on the market. SAP Business One presents an opportunity to businesses wanting to replace their incumbent systems with a modern, user-friendly solution. With an intuitive user interface, productivity and user engagement is enhanced across the organisation. As part of the SAP ecosystem, customers can be reassured of the long-term investment in an ERP solution that was purpose-built for SMEs and is supported by a global network of more than 800 partners.
9. Inefficient Order-to-Cash Process
An inefficient order-to-cash process is one of the most significant operational problems for a CFO. This end-to-end process has a direct impact on cash flow, working capital, revenue realisation, and customer satisfaction. In legacy or siloed systems, sales, finance, fulfilment, and customer service operate in isolation, which can lead to order delays, invoicing errors, poor visibility into order status and manual intervention that can create bottlenecks and increase the risk of errors. These inefficiencies erode profitability and can have a significant strain on the financial health of the business.
SAP Business One solves these issues by providing automated and integrated order-to-cash workflows that give finance and operations teams full visibility into each stage of the process. Dashboards and KPIs help CFOs monitor cash flow performance, supported by real-time data. Auto-generated invoices, credit checks, and integrated payment processes dramatically increase the speed, accuracy and control of the order-to-cash process, contributing to stronger customer relationships and more predictable revenue.
10. Missed Opportunities Due to Lack of Insight
Lack of timely, actionable business insights present big issues for CFOs still relying on legacy ERP systems. When data is held in disparate systems, scattered across departments, or multiple spreadsheets, it becomes a challenge to make decisions based on accurate data. This can cause them to miss opportunities to capitalise on emerging markets and trends in demand or fail to identify underperforming areas before they cause an impact to the bottom line.
By implementing a comprehensive ERP solution, such as SAP Business One, CFOs can gain the insight they need to take advantage of revenue opportunities, respond more quickly to supply chain or market trends, and optimise cost structures and resource allocation. With real-time information at their fingertips, CFOs are able to make smarter decisions that contribute to long-term business success.
SAP Business One gave Ascarii’s customer, Hawthorn Trading, the insight they needed to react to market trends. This means they don’t lose out when the steel market fluctuates and are able to pass on cost savings to their customers while still protecting their margin, which gives them a competitive edge.
Conclusion
For CFOs navigating rapid growth, ERP selection is a strategic decision. Chosen wisely, the right solution can be a catalyst for innovation, performance, and long-term profitability. SAP Business One is the ideal ERP solution for SMEs with big ambitions, delivering the insights, control and scalability to support your next phase of growth.
As a globally trusted ERP solution, used by more than 80,000 companies worldwide, and supported by a network of more than 800 partners around the world, SAP Business One provides an integrated platform designed to enable detailed insight into every area of your business.
As the leading cloud-first SAP Business One partner in EMEA, Ascarii has extensive experience in implementing SAP Business One into all types of business. We believe in a collaborative approach to understanding your business and working with you to meet your business objectives through the successful implementation of SAP Business One. Whether you have plans to grow your business, reduce overheads or gain greater insight and visibility across departments, we can provide the technology and guidance to help you achieve those goals. Get in touch with our friendly team now to find out how we can help you.