How ERP Can Benefit Your Import Export Businesses
It’s hard to envision an industry more complex or more regulated than the import export business. As you well know if you’re a part of this exciting industry, it offers many lucrative benefits to those who are willing to work long enough, hard enough and smart enough. However, along with those benefits come a myriad of challenges: delivery and shipping problems, language barriers, tracking product supplies and a seemingly unending list of other issues that can plague your business each and every working day.
Fortunately, there is a particular type of software designed to automate, streamline and synchronize internal and external operations of companies just as complex as yours: ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you might assume that ERP was designed specifically as importer software!
A Little Background on ERP
The very first ERP software modules were introduced by a company called MCBA in the 1980s. These relatively simple modules were intended for PCs and designed to address only accounting functions. Later, in the 1990s as PCs gave way to large-scale computer systems, a company called Macola developed the first true ERP software modules. That same company was later purchased by Exact, and the Exact Macola ERP software products continue to provide business solutions for companies around the world.
Do You Need ERP?
Today the ERP software produced by Exact Macola and many other companies is capable of automating and streamlining the day-to-day operations of even the most complicated business. In essence, ERP integrates virtually all business functions throughout a company. For many years, most companies used different software programs for different parts of the organization: one for accounting, one for sales and marketing, one for distribution and customer relations, another for human resources, and so on. Although each one might have been sufficient on its own, getting these various software products to work together cohesively often proved to be an impossible task. ERP technology resolved that problem.
If you’re ready to begin your search for ERP importer software, be sure to look for a package that can answer some of the specific needs of this complex but rewarding industry:
- Tracking global product inventories
- Forecasting market demand
- Ensuring prompt delivery of product to customers
- Overcoming language barriers
- Suggesting optimal purchase quantity of products
- Providing landing cost support
- Creating a future inventory delivery schedule visible to both suppliers and importers
- Projecting future delivery problems
While there are a wide variety of ERP software products available on the market, it’s important to choose a company that has experience in providing software to the import export industry. They will be best equipped to understand the special needs of your business.