Do you find yourself flipping between many applications to get one job done? Are you wasting time due to poor inventory management? Is your team struggling to stay organized and on a timeline? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might want to invest in enterprise software. But first, let’s answer the question: What is enterprise software?
Enterprise software, also called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, is large-scale software designed to integrate the various departments and roles of an organization by allowing access to data in one location. In short, enterprise software can be any software that handles most tasks or solves various problems across an organization’s enterprise.
Businesses, schools, charities, governments, and more can all benefit from enterprise software solutions, especially when they are customized to fit an organization’s unique needs.
Types of Enterprise Software Solutions
There are many types of enterprise applications. Each one offers its own set of tools and benefits. Let’s look at some of the most popular options.
Customer Relationship Management
Customers make the world go round, and as such,customer relationship management (CRM) is a top priority for most businesses. With customer relationship management tools, your business can merge the information and processes for all customer-facing employees in departments like marketing, sales, and customer support.
For instance, your sales team can learn which marketing materials a prospect has received and viewed frequently, indicating the content they find the most relevant. Your sales rep can then have an informed discussion that’s more likely to provide value for the prospect.
By having easy access to reliable data, your employees can make better, faster decisions. As a result, your customers are happier, and your employees can complete tasks more efficiently.
User Feedback Management
If you want to ensure your customer relationships are successful, you can add user feedback management into your enterprise software. By doing so, your business can collect and manage feedback from customers in a centralized location. Then, you can access that data and turn it into helpful, actionable information.
For example, you may want to collect support tickets to identify issues in your operations. Or you may want to ask customers why they chose to leave after cancelling their accounts. With this feedback, you could fix recurring issues and increase customer retention.
Business Intelligence Management
Your business is large and complex, and it will only continue to grow. You need software that can help you see the big picture while also allowing you to home in on specific areas when it’s time to make an important decision. Business intelligence tools can help you do both of those and more.
You can collect data from all areas of your business and use visualization capabilities, such as dashboards and reports, to turn it into actionable insights that can be used to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Does your team waste precious time going from one analytics expert to the next trying to get information? With the right business intelligence tools, you can give every employee the power to understand and act on data by allowing them to create charts and graphs that make it easy to understand.
Knowledge is power, and business intelligence software puts that power in your hands.
Project Management
Do your business processes often include tight deadlines or involve teams with many members? Project management software can streamline these processes by allowing your employees to collaborate and stay connected even when they’re working in different places. With the work-from-home model becoming increasingly popular, more and more businesses are incorporating project management solutions.
Your team can use this type of enterprise software to set deadlines or target dates, so every team member is always on the same page. When the next big project lands on your desk, you can assign each team member relevant tasks, link related tasks to each other, and create deadlines for each item.
Human Resources Management
Rather than data, human resources management focuses on—you guessed it—the human side of your business. From tracking sick leave and wage increases to completing performance reviews and government paperwork, enterprise software can create more efficient, automated processes for your employees.
Your employees can save time with automation, and you can rest assured knowing your paperwork is ready for the next audit.
Accounting and Finance Management
Whether you’re a financial institution or you have an in-house accounting team, enterprise software can help you save time and improve accuracy by streamlining and automating processes. You can track accounts payable, receivable, general ledgers, and more.
These tools can also provide accurate financial forecasting and help you set and monitor budgets.
Supply Chain Management
If your operations rely on inventory,supply chain management is essential for avoiding errors and improving the efficiency of your organization. This type of enterprise software focuses on facets of product management like:
- Purchase orders
- Distribution
- Regulatory compliance
- Manufacturing
- Overall inventory management
It can handle a wide range of tasks that benefit your supply chain, from notifying your team of low stock levels in real time to tracking items from sourcing to final customer delivery.
Product Lifecycle Management
Creating successful products requires seamless collaboration, detailed design and planning, and full transparency. With the right software solutions, you can create a central location for your team to view product designs and make changes that are reflected throughout the entirety of the product lifecycle.
If even one extra screw is added to the plans, every team member will know—whether they’re involved in design or quality assurance.
Everyone is kept on the same page, ensuring compliance and design requirements are met every step of the way.
Social Media Management
Marketing is essential for business growth. It puts your products or services in front of customers, keeps you top of mind, and ultimately leads to sales. With the rise of social media platforms, marketing campaigns are no longer restricted to mailers and brochures.
To keep an active social media presence, it may be time to invest in marketing automation. Social media management software offers cutting-edge tools that allow you to skip the chore of manually visiting each platform every day. It saves your team time and gives you more real estate on your customers’ social media timelines.
Are you gearing up for some large marketing campaigns? With social media management tools, you can determine the best day and time for posting on social media, schedule posts months in advance, and store all your photos and copy in one place. You can even choose target audiences and promote your content for a specific demographic, making sure your content gets in front of the right people.
Benefits of Enterprise Software Solutions
No matter which type of enterprise-level software seems like the best fit for your business, you’ll be able to take advantage of the following benefits:
Streamline Processes
Save time and energy by eliminating the need to switch between multiple programs. With enterprise software, you can combine many software solutions into one, so your employees can communicate and complete tasks in one place.
Increase Data Accessibility
Data doesn’t have to be difficult to access. Many businesses have their data stored in multiple locations across various departments. As a result, it takes more time and effort to find what employees are looking for. By integrating all your data into an enterprise software solution that’s easy to use, information can be accessible across your entire business.
Improve ROI
Every organization looks for opportunities to improve their return on investment. Your business can maximize energy utilization and reduce waste by combining your processes and resources into one software solution that’s shared across departments.
Reduce Errors
It’s common knowledge that manual entry leads to more errors. Humans aren’t perfect, and we can’t expect them to avoid every mistake. With the right enterprise software, you no longer have to manually move, enter, and re-enter data. Improve accuracy and increase speed with process automation.
Enhance Reporting
No two organizations are the same, so you shouldn’t be expected to make a one-size-fits-all reporting solution work for your operations. Companies collect data for analysis, but often struggle with getting it out of their systems in a way that works for them.
With the ability to createcustom reports in real time, you can gain a better view of your employees, clients, and business. Custom software development can help you create the enterprise solutions that will give you the tools you need to best use your data in a way that’s different from your competitors.
Increase Transparency
By combining business processes and connecting departments, you can increase transparency throughout your business. With enterprise-level tools, you can manage projects across multiple teams, use data related to various departments, and communicate with teammates no matter where they are.
Create Custom Enterprise Software for Your Business
What’s the difference between packaged and custom software?
Think of it as ordering off the menu versus going to a buffet. If you and your friend order the same menu item, you’ll receive the exact same meal. And if you decide you want to upgrade your side, you’ll have to pay more. With a buffet, you may pay more up front, but you’re able to customize your plate to be exactly what you want.
With customized software, you work with a development team to create exactly what you need on your own budget. Let’s talk about some of the other benefits of custom enterprise applications:
Customize Software for Your Needs
One-size-fits-all software solutions are in the past. It’s time to get the software you deserve with the exact features you need and want. With custom enterprise-level software, you no longer have to pay for extra features that you’ll never use. Software development services can help you maximize your money and, ultimately, improve your enterprise.
Scale as You Grow
As your business grows and evolves, your needs will change. The number of employees, projects, customers, products, and more may increase, which means your original enterprise software solutions may no longer fit your business needs.
With custom software, your development partner can adapt and grow your software with you, so you can continue to deliver the value your employees and customers have come to expect.
Improve Decision-Making With Greater Visibility
Great decisions rely on great data. By customizing your software for your business, you can collect, analyze, and report the data that is most important to the decisions you make. Rather than wasting time wading through data and reports you don’t need, invest in a software platform that does the hard work for you.
Control Your Costs
Think about it like this: Someone else can own and control the software you pay for, or you can pay for custom software that you own and control. With custom enterprise software development, you own your code, which results in two major benefits:
- You avoid pricey licensing fees that come with packaged software.
- You never receive unexpected notifications of price increases.
You can take control and make the most of your budget with custom enterprise application software.
Find the Right Software Solutions Partner
Companies everywhere are looking to create their own custom enterprise software, but how do you find the right partner to begin the journey with? At Geneca, we measure our success by your success. We’ll use our experience and expertise to offer guidance and support from our first meeting through the development and evolution of your software.
Even if you have no software experience or aren’t exactly sure what functions or features you want, we’ll listen and ask the right questions to uncover your pain points and identify your goals. We know the process can seem intimidating, but we’ll be with you every step of the way.
Reach out to us today, so we can start building the enterprise software you’ve been looking for.