What Will The ERP Implementation Project Cost?

There are so many variables when analyzing what an ERP project will cost that providing average values for a range of organization sizes is unlikely to be very helpful. However, the saying “forewarned is forearmed” can be applied to understanding what the various cost components of a project will be, and therefore enable better planning, management and execution of the project

The key difference that influences ERP Implementation cost between organizations is process maturity. Process maturity underpins how the ERP project plays out including how the project is approached, what is done, and how it is done

4 Must Know Powerful Techniques Of Top Performing Corporates

Much of business’s success is tied to efficiency and cost reduction. The most successful businesses are complementing gains in efficiency with initiatives that add tangible value.

You’ve heard the saying, “Work smarter, not harder.” This is true in managing business expenses. Whilst top listed companies work hard, the techniques they’re using have allowed them to most efficiently use their staff resources, and in turn, are having a consistent, positive impact on their companies’ bottom lines

Intrigued? Think it’s out of your reach? Or this success is only for the largest of companies? Consider the techniques below, which have worked financial marvels for many top companies. Whether implementing one or all, your bottom line will be positioned to grow

Two reasons why businesses are losing competitive edge by their technology choices

Who's in charge of making the decisions in your business concerning technology? Ideally, you want an internal IT manager or a CIO with IT experience calling the tech shots. However, many businesses don't have this luxury. According to recent surveys, 48 percent of businesses have managers making decisions about technology implementation that don't have IT experience

2 powerful ways to leverage free enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software

The reality of business is that it takes more effort to woe over new customers than it does to get more business from existing customers. It therefore makes sense to cement relations with existing customers and this can be done through a variety of means. Increasingly, businesses are leveraging information technology to do this. Companies such as Amazon have perfected this by the recent introduction of the Amazon Dash for their customers.

Blow your competition out of the water with Big Data Solutions

Big Data is an important part of any business, regardless of the size. Without understanding consumer trends, how can you hope to sell your product? Unfortunately, many companies don't know how to handle big data, and this holds back their earning potential significantly.

What Big Data comes down to is the analysis of mostly unstructured information and data to spot trends in business, or to track individual customer action and develop business intelligence that can be used to take advantage of these trends. This clearly has its advantages for businesses, and it can be a valuable asset in taking on the modern-day workplace. But muddling through a sea of data can be difficult at times. Here are three tips that can help you get your Big Data vessel back on course.

Save Big For Each Telecommuting Employee

Big Data is an important part of any business, regardless of the size. Without understanding consumer trends, how can you hope to sell your product? Unfortunately, many companies don't know how to handle big data, and this holds back their earning potential significantly.

What Big Data comes down to is the analysis of mostly unstructured information and data to spot trends in business, or to track individual customer action and develop business intelligence that can be used to take advantage of these trends.This clearly has its advantages for businesses, and it can be a valuable asset in taking on the modern-day workplace. But muddling through a sea of data can be difficult at times. Here are three tips that can help you get your Big Data vessel back on course.

2 Simple Ways to cut down excess expenses Out Of Your Business Using enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software

For a business to increase its profitability, it must perform one of two alternatives:

All businesses would want to increase revenue and cut costs all at the same time. Many strategies are pursued as business chases both goals. Some attempt to cut costs such as wages by laying off staff, cutting back on non-business related expenses, and the smartest businesses being those that don't pay a single cent extra towards software related costs through adoption of open-source software! ...

5 Easy Tips About Budgeting With enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software

For business to succeed, it needs to plan as best as it can. This means being able to monitor all activities within the right time frame when required. Strategy is best judged by the business’s ability to meets its budget. If a company has no budget it will lose track of how well it is doing in its strategy...

You Don't Have To Be A Big Corporation To Have Great Inventory Management - PART I

Inventory Management is amongst the top reasons why South African businesses invest in enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting solutions. The challenge for businesses is to be able to trust both the stock quantities and the costing that they base their decision making on. Incorrect reporting of either the quantities and costing of inventory has obvious detrimental effects to operational viability. When business start out, the challenge of sound inventory management is not apparent. We find often that most small businesses’ start by utilising spreadsheets for the management of stock quantity and costs. This works out fine for some time depending on the transactional volume but eventually becomes unmanageable...

You Don't Have To Be A Big Corporation To Have Great Inventory Management - PART II

Stock replenishment management is the latest craze with smart gadgets. Smart internet enabled gadgets such as smart fridges automatically order milk when it’s running low. Smart printers automatically reorder ink toner when it’s depleted, and the list goes on. These features though new to consumers, have been utilised by big businesses at an enterprise level within their ERP Accounting software for quite some time to better manage their own inventory .With free, cloud based ERP Accounting software, small businesses also get similar functionality to help run their businesses better.

3 Business Accounting Limits Worth Obsessing Over

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Accounting software no matter how advanced, is only as good as its configuration. The value it adds to the operations of a business is heavily dependent on the expertise of personnel responsible for mapping out key business processes. When undertaking this task, consideration of business relevant metrics must be taken into account. Whilst these vary considerably from operation to operation, there are financial fundamentals which every business must pay attention to if it is run better. Listed below are 3 limits we recommend every business should implement or at least heed some consideration:

Hang On To the Top Talent in Your Business

One of the biggest personnel challenges faced by all companies is not just recruiting the top talent but keeping those talented people once they decide to join the company. Many businesses create programs designed to nurture these high fliers and teach them the advanced skills they need in order to climb the ladder and succeed. Unfortunately, for many companies these programs are simply not successful, leaving businesses to continually scramble for more top talent.

5 tips for South African small businesses to run better

Financial analysis is key to the performance of business. Business administration requires that as a manager one must understand the finances of the company and the Income statement is one such area.In this article, we assess the income statement of a business and review indicators it provides that help a business run better

Accounting Dashboards & Analytics: Top 3 things that you should know

The main aim of dashboards in enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software is to provide at a glance, an overview of the healthiness of business operations. Managers love them and in fact, if most influencers of ERP purchase decisions were honest, they will admit that their decision on which ERP software to go with was heavily influenced on how pleasing to the eye the dashboards they saw during product demos were. Dashboards are important and have their place in the management of business, but running a business based solely on dashboard figures alone is like a football coach making decisions on how the team should play based on the scoreboard and subsequent statistics .Any coach worth his pay check knows that this is not how games are won. The same advice applies to the successful running and growing of business. Today we'll look at some considerations when evaluating the dashboards and analytics of ERP Accounting Software.

5 Team Collaboration Tools available to small business enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting to help SMEs thrive in South Africa

A business is only as efficient as the collaboration of the team. Business efficiency is about ensuring that the time spent during work hours is optimized through timeous completion of tasks and ensuring nothing slips through the cracks by good management of business related data. ERPNext with its team collaboration tools helps South African small businesses to streamline their operations, enabling them to grow without having to worry about associated costs.

Top 5 Things Your Small Business Will love about going in the cloud for enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting in South Africa

There has been so much hype around cloud computing that at times it’s unclear exactly what it’s actually all about. There is a variety of software which promises to take your business apps to the cloud but the most irreplaceable, cloud native app of all times, is and will remain the humble web browser. So in our review of the things to love when a small business goes into the cloud for their ERP Accounting solution, we are only considering 100 %cloud based ERPs that run wholly in the web browser and not through other clunky desktop apps that need further installation and carry additional licensing fees...

2 most common concerns over cloud based enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting solution for South African businesses.

One of the most common concerns we hear when we first mention cloud based ERP Accounting solution is that of reliable internet connection. Reliable internet is still very much a cause of concern in South Africa for some business owners, especially for those based in the smaller cities that still lag behind when compared to bigger business hubs, namely Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng. This concern is easily addressed by a best of both worlds deployment of ERPNext where the server is hosted on the main business’s local area network (LAN) but still linked to the internet by means of a public IP address. This setup of ERPNext ensures that it remains business as usual at the head office ....

6 ways an enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting solution can boost productivity for SMEs in South Africa

We have all heard from the time management gurus that recommend labelling everyday work activities into blocks of A, B, C D priority etc. with A being the most productive. Thereafter, revisit activities falling under block A and sub categorise them as 1,2,3,4 in order of importance and then work the day according to that priority. The reality is that some people just aren't good at determining what are priority A, priority B and priority C activities and sticking to that. For business owners however, this thinking around activities should simply be categorised as either 1) High Payoff or 2) High Leverage.

Solving South Africa’s SME challenges with ERPNext

South Africa is a great nation that offers business opportunities to those that are looking to be successful in creating wealth, employment or simply providing a solution to the community. In realizing this, the South Africa government offers support for SME with different Acts such as the National Small Business Act of 1996 which directly or indirectly seek to promote this business sector; however SMEs face various challenges which require more solutions to make them competitive and relevant to South Africa.

4 less things to stress over when you go cloud open source enterprise resource planning (ERP)

If your small business is like most businesses, it started off managing its data on spreadsheets and word processing software. This is fine when the transactional volume is not much and the complexity is still minimal, but if the expectation is to grow the business, then a more scalable solution is required. Most small businesses have unfortunately put off taking the decision to acquire a sound accounting ERP solution and are surprised why their small business just aren’t growing at the rate they desire or expect. The main reason for this inaction has been the prohibitive cost of proprietary systems but thankfully with the emergence of the cloud, this reason falls away ...

Project Management Made Simple When integrated to cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software

Project management can be a hassle if you don’t have the right system in place to track and control the different activities that will occur. Any company that is based on projects needs a reliable system that will make project management an easy task to be in charge of.

Mobile apps for cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software to delight clients.

You’ve worked hard to secure that all important appointment with your sales prospect, demonstrated extensively how your company’s solution is the perfect fit for their requirements but unfortunately, some unforeseen additions arose in the presentation and now the prospect wants to know what the final figure will be to obtain what you’ve agreed on. In the past, because you lacked real time access to the inventory system, you had no idea of the stock’s availability or its price and therefore had to first fire off an email to the warehouse and only after they reply, did you then respond to your prospect. But thanks to the cloud...

3 Prep Tips for cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software implementation

You've evaluated various alternatives and have finally decided on an open source cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software. The decision has not been easy as you want to invest only in a product that genuinely helps your business.The last thing you want is to run the business to the ground or at the very least, significantly disrupt its operations because your business went for cloud based ERP Accounting software. Today we'll look at some of the ways that you can start preparing your small business for cloud accounting

Getting the solution behind the solution – some considerations when selecting enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software.

You've sat through several product demos, asked the presenters clever questions and they have shown the way their system address your concerns. They have told you that if you sign up in that month, your business will avoid the hefty price increase kicking in the following month. In the foremost of your mind, you are aware that your business urgently needs a solution to address its information woes that have begun to cost it time and more importantly money. You've looked at the all the systems and wondered how they could all be different when surely they all do the same thing at the end of the day...right!

What makes CRM critical to a business?

Managing client relationships is probably the most critical relationship that a business can manage. Clients are important to the business for many reasons and we need to be able to understand how this is related to the performance of the business. Having the right software is imperative as it will assist to make the relationship easier to manage.

Top Tips For Growing Your Business

So, you’ve started out in business and things are going pretty well. You’re building your reputation, and even starting to make a little money. How can you go about getting that all important growth that will carry you through to the next level?

10 Top signs your business needs a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) Accounting software

You have been running your successful business and it has grown in leaps and bounds. Perhaps like most businesses, you started off by managing the business data on the easiest to get tools available such as spreadsheets, word documents or familiar entry level off-the-shelf function specific packages. As the business continues to generate multi-levels of information, this has increased the demand for richer information critical to decision making. You may not be thinking too much into your small business information requirements until it begins to cost it a significant amount of money and time that could be better utilized elsewhere.

5 Tips to go Open Source for Business

Open source is an exciting prospect for many people whilst using it in business is always something to think about. Business is intricate in making money and becoming a success. There are many different variables that are involved that management have to consider in order to make money and these decisions have to be made in the right balance. Choosing the right software, especially the right open source for your business is critical in order to process your transactions the right way. There are different variables that also need to be considered for selecting the right software. The same can thus be said for selecting Enterprise Resource Planning Software which captures different aspects to your business. Today we are going to look at 5 tips to go open source for your business.

Top 5 things to know about small businesses in South Africa in 2016

South Africa does not invest in procuring accurate statistics on small businesses in South Africa, making it difficult to find the exact number of companies that operate in the country.

According to SME experts, what complicates matters is that there is no clear definition of what a small business is, and a lack of measurability across informal industries.

Estimates place the GDP contribution of small businesses at 52% and 61%.

Here are the top 5 things about small businesses in South Africa – and how owners are handling the current economic environment.

Top 4 Factors limiting the growth of small business in South Africa.

Much is to be done to improve the business environment in South Africa in order to harness the growth of small firms. In this article we analyse the factors limiting the success and growth of small businesses in South Africa

Promote remote team collaboration with VoIP systems

Amongst the common concerns we come across after we mention cloud based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is that employee productivity. Employers are concerned that once staff are able to work from any location, then productivity will decrease as employers will be unable to macro manage them. However, this is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, according to a Harvard Business Review study, work at home policies for your small business tends to be more beneficial for your company. Employees tend to be happier and happy employees equal happy clients.

5 Things you must know about your business data recovery

Successful businesses know that to address tomorrow’s data disaster, their prep work has to start today. It might sound cliché, but proactive maintenance and disaster recovery preparedness is the most efficient way of tackling the latest data breach, malware intrusion, or data storage problem. When anything can happen at any moment, from fires and power outage, to theft and human error, most companies can’t afford to lose a single file—let alone access to their sensitive data for days, weeks, or months at a time.

Thriving in the cloud in South Africa

Half the battle when adapting new information technology, whether it’s the cloud or any other service, is going in with the right attitude. If you focus on how it will help your business and mentally prepare yourself for adapting the new technology, you are much more likely to succeed.

Five Of The Best Open-Source Enterprise IT Tools

Managing an Enterprise IT environment is a very serious business and today there are a wide range of tools to help IT professionals maintain their networks to ensure maximum up-time and efficiency. While there are tons of commercial options available, the truth is some of the very best tools for the trade are completely open-source tools available to anyone.

4 security risks you must know about personal mobile devices for business use

The proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has meant that we have personal computing is with us wherever we go. These devices allow us to take work anywhere with us. Whilst business strategies that allows staff to bring their own devices boosts productivity, they also poses a number of security risks if no safety precautions are put in place. In this article, we review the cause of these problems and the security risks you should know before implementing a bring your own device strategy (BYOD) in your business.

What We Can Learn from the Security Hacks at Standard Bank

Almost all businesses have to take proper security measures if they want to avoid a security breach. No one is invulnerable to mass scale security breaches that cost your company money. Three hours, around 100 people, 1 400 Japanese ATMs and 1 600 counterfeit credit cards, was all it took for fraudsters to exploit Standard Bank in Japan. The bank, which stands to lose up to R300 million, described the attack as a “sophisticated and coordinated fraud incident”. Beneath the dramatic headlines, we had many lessons that small business owners could learn from

Using the cloud to build your small business

In recent months, there has been a lot of talk about how small business owners can level the playing field with giant, global enterprises. The cloud has been one of the suggested methods of boosting profits and productivity. However, does the cloud equate to a lot of unsubstantiated hype or does it meet up to expectations?

Debunking cloud security myths

Cloud services have grown increasingly popular and widespread, but there are a lot of myths surrounding cloud security. Despite this, those myths have begun to fade, and the times where people viewed the cloud with suspicion and distrust have started to change. In recent surveys, it’s been uncovered that only nine percent of business owners look at the cloud as their greatest threat to security

The Importance of a Strong Employee Handbook

Though many of us take the employee handbook for granted, a well-written and up-to-date handbook is a great tool for both a company and its employees and should be properly maintained and referred to on a regular basis to ensure that all company policies are being followed.

Has Your Business Gone Mobile?

Mobility is proving to be a major pain point for businesses, especially when it comes to implementing new technology solutions. It’s become crucial to consider how mobility can influence the growth of your business and improve operations, particularly with the cloud gaining ground and mobile devices becoming omnipresent in the workplace. How will your business learn from this influx of mobility?

How the Cloud Can Double the Profits of a Small Business

It’s been proven that the cloud is ideal for improving the way that organizations just like yours are handling their day-to-day operations, bringing both an increase in profits, net growth, and staff productivity. So, naturally, small businesses are moving in the direction of taking advantage of the cloud for their computing needs

3 notable qualities that most SMEs want for their cloud in 2016

Cloud services are growing more common to the world of small businesses, to the point where almost all businesses take advantage of the cloud in some way, shape, or form. However, a business’s specific cloud needs vary, and the same solution doesn’t work for everyone. Still, there are a few notable qualities that most SMEs want for their cloud in 2016.

How to Avoid Office Burnout

When a hard-working business owner such as yourself gets going, you keep working until you’ve got nothing left to give. This is commonly known as “office burnout,” and isn’t healthy for anyone, or anything; especially your business and office relationships.

Office burnout is similar to the physical term, “exhaustion.” You do too much, and it has a mental effect on how you work and behave. Just like any other illness, it’s important to take measures to prevent it. Otherwise, you risk a full-on epidemic, and before you know it, you won’t be the only one suffering. There are several ways you can cut down on working yourself to the bone:

5 methods for using call data to help grow your business

If you’re making or receiving VoIP calls from clients you may be sitting on top of a trove of valuable data, and not even know it. Whether you’re still getting accustomed to your new telephony system and its features or you’ve been using it for much longer and are simply unaware of its existence, it’s time to take a look at your VoIP data. Here are 5 methods for using call data to help you increase the ROI of your VoIP infrastructure.

Hire Carefully Or Risk Losing Your Business Big Money

How much does a “bad hire” cost your company? Probably more than you think. In a recent survey ,a staggering 41% of companies estimated that a bad hire cost their firm more than R250 000. A quarter of those surveyed estimated that the cost was higher than R500 000, and of course, top tier positions get dramatically more expensive than either of those figures.

Has Your Business Gone Mobile? Be Sure to Account for These 4 Trends

Mobility is proving to be a major pain point for businesses, especially when it comes to implementing new technology solutions. It’s become crucial to consider how mobility can influence the growth of your business and improve operations, particularly with the cloud gaining ground and mobile devices becoming omnipresent in the workplace. How will your business learn from this influx of mobility?

5 Tips to manage and control the flow of your business’s data

BYOD is a great new trend that can improve innovation, employee morale, and the productivity of your staff. This is only true, though, if you approach BYOD in a safe and secure way that manages to contain and control the flow of your business’s data. Implementing such a plan isn’t easy, and there’s much that needs to be checked off before you can confidently start using BYOD.

Consumerised ERP: new, fresh approach

Most ERP vendors in today's market have realised that ERP can no longer be presented in the traditional way and must be adapted to suit the modern workplace. This will be dominated by the emerging millennial entrepreneur

Frequent Password Changes May Compromise Security

Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. True, you definitely want to break the habit of using the same password across multiple accounts, but where changing your password is concerned, changing it too often can actually work against you.

4 Reasons Your Business Should Consider a Virtual Private Network

Whether you're on the move or at the workplace, your WiFi connection isn't the most secure method of browsing the Internet. Hacking techniques are growing more sophisticated, and you never know who could be observing your connection and Internet activity. Thankfully, there are ways to remediate this issue, like using a Virtual Private Network (VPN

A VPN provides many benefits for your business needs, and brings about two main goals. The VPN hides your network signal with encryption, shielding it from unauthorized viewing, and it hides your IP address by making it appear to be something that it is not, such as a machine in a foreign country or location. There are obvious benefits to this, but let's go over five of the best reasons to use a VPN.

Trust drives every organisation — here is how to build it

CONTRARY to popular belief, cultivating a high-trust culture is not a "soft" skill — it is a hard necessity. Trust is not just a social virtue — it is truly an economic driver for every organisation. Your ability to build trust has a profound effect on business results because trust affects two measurable outcomes: speed and cost.

5 security measures made simple

Let’s face it, keeping yourself free from online threats can be a pain: using different passwords for every site, changing them every three months, using advanced encryption, the list goes on and on. You either end up paranoid of being online or give up altogether. We’ve organized 5 simple cybersecurity measures that we promise anyone can implement

Successful Remote Workers Swear By These 4 Rules

With today’s great technology solutions, working remotely is no longer just a dream. Many businesses have either a partial or a complete remote staff, and it’s all held together by modern technology solutions. However, even with the latest tech, the remote worker still has to invest in their own success.

Data lingo

One of your business’s most valuable assets is data, and ensuring its safety should be a top priority for your IT department. But what of the fact that there are so many different types of data nowadays? It seems like every few months there’s a new buzzword for the latest flavour, so it’s important that you get a taste of each new kind to ensure you’re up-to-date.

Hardware-as-a-Service and its benefits

The new flashy set of PCs your company just bought last year are becoming outdated, and you don’t have enough IT staff to maintain them. The same goes with servers, wireless printers and faxes. If this is your current situation, it might be time to consider changing the way you obtain and manage your hardware. Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) is a pay-as-you-go model where you pay your Managed Services Provider a monthly fee while they take care of all your hardware upgrades, maintenance and management. Here are 5 reasons HaaS might be a better answer for your business

20 Percent of Small Businesses Take CyberSecurity Seriously – Does Yours?

Barclaycard, one of the giants in the industry of global payments, has some disturbing new data to share about the state of cybersecurity in small and medium-sized businesses. Less than one in five of the businesses surveyed viewed cybersecurity as their top priority. What makes that fact more disturbing still is the fact that nearly half of those businesses admitted to having been a victim of a cyber-attack within the last 12-months, and slightly more than half (54%) saying that they are fearful they may be hit again.