Does an Integrated Business System Make Sense for The Average Coffee Company?

To answer this, you have to analyze the benefits in terms of REAL dollars your business spends today and figure out your return on investment (ROI).  There are several primary categories to consider visualizing your current expenditure in manual or duplicate processes:

• Communicating order status & availability with customers
• Printing, organizing and dealing with paperwork for distribution
• EDI processing
• Interfacing with retailers, franchisees, and satellite locations
• Import/Export from POS systems
• Data mining, forecasting, and reporting from multiple departments to gain an overall vision of your business.
• Internal production communications
• Correcting errors
• Managing purchase orders with vendors, and duplicate entry on vendor web portals
• Manual shipping and receiving processes with 3rd party software
• Matching AP transactions and issuing payments, dealing with bank statements and credit cards
• Managing AR and Collections
• Manual journal entries, tax reporting, and payroll reporting

Integrated business systems like ours are designed to reduce or eliminate these processes entirely. For most business owners calculating the labor capital you have tied up in day to day processes is painful, but also necessary, especially if you want to grow.  Unfortunately, many small companies refuse to see the capital they have buried in these processes, and therefore remain small companies forever.

If you really want to give yourself a splitting headache, look at each of the bullet points above and jot down how much time each employee (or group of employees) in your business spends on each activity in a day, and then multiply that by their hourly rate (or just use an average for now).  Add it all up and you have your daily investment, for just the things that a complete integrated business system is designed to eliminate.  Ouch!

Now for the light-bulb moment, multiply that daily total by the number of days a month or year your business operates, and ask yourself if it makes sense to invest in a complete integrated business system?  Your answer will depend on the cost of the system, but now you have a point of reference, and a good way to visualize costs and benefits. Plus, you will never forget that number!

We invite you to look at Acumatica from Insite4Coffee.  We’ve spent over 30 years working with distribution companies to solve complex business challenges with technology.  We can stop the pain and help your coffee business grow.

Lets talk!