Many companies, despite the now large and veritable supply of ERP solutions, I still use Excel to analyse data. One must also pay tribute to the Office solution. It is not only a well-known way of recording - yes, actually - everything! Moreover, most PCs are equipped with the Office package as standard, which makes the tool very inexpensive. Nevertheless, in the long run ? and especially with increasing numbers of customers ? Excel is not suitable for the daily business in a company. Three reasons why switching from Excel to an ERP system is worthwhile.
Excel provides overviews, ERP automates them
Excel is good for getting an overview. But only on a small scale. What a company needs is to be able to call up information from an overview at any time when it is needed. Let's take for example the bills writing. This is a process that exists in every company and should run smoothly. But if every invoice has to be set up anew, e.g. the invoice number has to be looked up in the last invoice, this is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. An ERP system would ensure that the number is always in the right place in the invoice mask and is also transferred correctly ? without any manual effort.
Furthermore, the ERP system also takes over much weightier tasks, such as the management of open items. Instead of tediously checking manually which invoice payments have already been received and Reminders The software takes over here.
Many ERP solutions can now independently access your bank statements in online banking. Incoming payments are then assigned to open items, which can then be booked out of the system with one click. However, if no payment is received on time, you are automatically reminded to send a reminder ? with another click.
Excel for the individual, ERP for all
Excel documents ? actually any kind of document ? like to disappear into the depths of the desktop folders. That's not Excel's fault, that's people's. Because whether in our private lives or at work, we all have our filing systems in which the Documents are usually filed first before they end up in the central filing system. However, it happens in the best companies that just when a certain document is needed, the employee responsible for its administration is not in the building.
ERP systems make such a process a rarity thanks to an automated filing system. All documents can always be found by a document number or are assigned to a customer or supplier. This means that the document can actually always be found.
Online solutions are ideal for spontaneous access, with which documents can be retrieved from the network, edited and filed there, anytime and anywhere.
3 - Excel is simple, ERP is reliable
Perhaps the best thing about Excel are the evaluation options. The simplicity of the pivot tables is accessible to everyone and despite a considerable level of performance. But still ? the figures must first be copied into the Excel document, in the best case exported.
In ERP solutions, all figures are already available and are constantly updated. Data such as sales figures can be easily retrieved with a few clicks.
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