Pricing

Once your business takes off you quickly realize that you need systems to keep track of everything. Is the store up and running? Are products priced right? Do we have enough inventory? And most critically, Are we making money?

The answer to each question seems to be another spreadsheet or a $29/month web site (or a $199/month web site!). The number of spreadsheets and subscriptions continue to pile up and while each one answers a question, the overall result is one of confusion and inconsistency. Different systems are answering different questions with different inputs and the company ends up with multiple answers to questions like "What does this product cost?".

Smart business people focus on Strategy, Systems, and Scale.

• Strategy, so that there is a PLAN about where the company wants to go and how they will work to get there.

• Systems so that there is greater accuracy, consistency, and less labor required.

• And Scale so that the People can run the Systems and the Systems can run the business.

When all of that is put into a single, master system, it is called Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP for short). All the huge companies and multi-nationals run an ERP as their Business Operating System. It is literally the System that their Business Operates on.

And it can cost a ton of money. Small companies (~$20M/annual sales) often pay $100,000 per year in licenses and another $100,000 to set up and implement the system. Big companies regularly pay millions to tens of millions.

Young, fast growing companies are in a tough spot. They have outgrown Quickbooks, Xero, and Tally, but it doesn't make sense to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on traditional ERP systems.